Dear Rita. Simona Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ to lighten up. Resisting the other three e-mails was impossible; she opened them all up at the same time. Don’t you? read the third, and the fourth, in bold caps, DON’T YOU???

      Unease replaced amusement. She opened the final message with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. It was cryptic—and a little too threatening for comfort.

      Are you afraid of heights?

      A.F.

      Rita felt her skin crawl. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. She took another look at the e-mail address, but it was simply A.F., the same as the writer’s signoff, coming from one of those generic mail hosting Web sites that everyone used when they preferred to keep their regular one private. She had one herself. That wasn’t much help.

      She hit the Delete key a little harder than necessary, sending the offending messages into the ether, and leaned back in her chair. This called for another chug of coffee. She lifted her cup, but it was empty. She left her possessions where they were. After all, she’d been a regular here for years. It wasn’t as if she thought anyone would touch her stuff for the few seconds it took to go to the counter and back. She ordered another coffee, keeping it simple this time. Plain, with the tiniest squirt of hazelnut in deference to the aforementioned, lamentable eight extra pounds. She went back to her table, sat and downed half the steaming cup before returning her attention to the glowing screen before her.

      A new e-mail had come in.

      It was from A.F.

      Even the coffee wasn’t enough to keep the chill out of her blood. She opened it at once, and stared at the unblinking words before her. How’s the coffee?

       Chapter 2

       R ita felt the hair at the back of her neck snap to attention. She put her hands to the base of her skull, tugging at the long, dark brown double-stranded twists that fell about her shoulders. How’s the coffee? How could this man, whoever he was, know where she was, and what she was drinking? The possibilities nauseated her. Either someone knew her habits so well that he could make an educated guess as to her whereabouts at seven every morning, or she was being watched. Right at this very moment.

      Wildly, she looked around, unable to keep the movement casual and circumspect. Had she been followed? Could someone be right there, in Starbucks, quietly watching her? She glanced from table to table, her heart feeling uncomfortably large in her chest.

      But all she could see were the regulars, caffeine addicts just like her who turned up every morning, just as she did, to sit in companionable, familiar surroundings while they had their morning fix. Rita knew them so well, she even had names for them.

      Across from her, there was the tall, agonizingly thin man who wore business suits and smelled of expensive cologne. Every day he carefully withdrew the financial section of the papers to read over his coffee, then left as silently as he came, abandoning the rest of the paper in a neat heap for whoever occupied his seat next. She privately called him William Wadsworth, Senior.

      Closest to her was an older man, who wore a cable-knit cardigan and tweed jacket whatever the weather, and who took plain coffee and a cheese sandwich every morning. No variations. No substitutions. He arrived at the same time, had his breakfast and left at the same time. Sometimes he timidly invited her or one of the other regulars to sit at his table, but whenever she accepted he never said much, just had his coffee and threw her the occasional shy smile. He always left a fifty-cent tip on the table. Rita felt sorry for him. She thought of him as Uncle Harold.

      Then there was the strange Goth girl who, like her, always took the same seat if she could get it, near the window. She was about eighteen, although it was hard to tell under the mass of black, greasy hair that fell over her face. Her skin was the color of oatmeal, and the thick, smudged kohl rimming her eyes made her look as though she was losing out on a lot of sleep. She wore the same black hoodie, dark gray jeans, black socks and black high-top Converse sneakers every day. The only hint of color about her was the dozen or so plastic bracelets on one arm, and an oversized silver pendant, representing some arcane symbol, between her small breasts.

      She was hunched over her PDA, thumbs flying as she moved the controls to her game, head bobbing to the rhythm of the music being piped into her ears via noodle-thin wires. Rita had decided that her name was Drucilla.

      A few joggers were buying drinks at the counter, and a young couple she hadn’t seen before were wrapped up in each other, sharing a chair made for one. Otherwise, the coffee shop was quiet.

      The staff, then? Could someone behind the counter have discreetly shot off an e-mail, and were they now covertly watching her, enjoying her reaction? That would be hard to believe. She glanced in their direction, but they were engrossed in their duties, hurrying to and fro in their green aprons, getting ready for the morning rush. Unless the brace-faced youngster fiddling with the digital register was also logged on to the Net at the same time, the scary note hadn’t come from inside the coffee shop.

      That left someone outside. The prickling of her scalp morphed into a throb at her temple. She looked furtively out the window, wondering queasily which of the dozens of pedestrians hurrying down Independence Avenue could be the one. But nobody so much as glanced inside. Served her right for sitting at the window. Making a sitting duck of herself. Tomorrow she was sitting against the farthest wall, facing the door.

      The coffee tasted bitter and cold to her now, although it was neither. She set it down and packed up her computer.

      Outside, in the mild autumn air, she turned west on Independence and followed it a few scant blocks before turning north onto Jubilee, where her apartment sat midway along the short street. It was an aging building, a sedate brownstone that only rose to a height of five stories, so that the nearby buildings towered over it, cutting out much of the natural light. Carved busts of angels once adorned the facade, but, after the first one worked free of its moorings and fell, the landlords took the rest of them down. Pale, angel-shaped scars remained on the wall, ghostly outlines etched into the grime.

      Real estate agents euphemistically described the building as “reminiscent of its former glory,” but she liked its charm. Elaborate brickwork decorated the doorway and windows, the tilework throughout was spectacular, and the hot water worked most of the time. Besides, when you considered what they were charging for rent in Santa Amata, she was getting a bargain.

      As she ran up the five steps to the main door, she glanced at her watch. She was ten minutes late for her daily jogging date with her best friend, Cassie, thanks to her distraction back in the coffee shop. Hurriedly, she took the stairs to the third floor, not bothering to wait for the elevator, opened up her apartment, tossed her computer and newspaper onto the couch and left again. There was no need to change as she was already in her sweats.

      By the time she made it to their regular meeting place, the convenience store around the corner, Cassie was there, leaning against a parking meter and doing stretches, bringing her knee up to her chest and holding it for counts of twenty. Considering her more-than-generous bustline, which dwarfed Rita’s fairly substantial C cups by several sizes, this was not quite as easy as it seemed.

      “You’re late, Steadman.”

      Rita began her leg bends. “I know. Sorry. I was, uh….” She wondered if she should say anything about the nasty e-mails. Was it worth getting into? She did get them from time to time, so it wasn’t a big deal. Although there was the eerie possibility that A.F. had known where she’d be this morning, she decided to forget it. “I was answering mail,” she said instead, quite truthfully.

      “And pumping your СКАЧАТЬ