All characters named in this chapter were created by Janet Evanovich

I was looking for a skip, Blackie Slieman, in a small town outside of Trenton called Mt. Holly. It's a historic tourist town full of row houses turned condo. Landscaped yards and white picket fences around back yard gardens. The skip was believed to be lying low with friends. I was in the low-income area several blocks off the main street. It was a quiet neighborhood. I was going to have to do something creative to figure out which house he was in.

I was driving a black Ford Explorer with dark tinted windows today. I made a few passes, but there wasn't much cover to sit and wait, even though it was after dark. I had an ear-bud in my left ear. I was driving slowly down one street after another pointing a parabolic microphone at the house windows, listening. If something interested me, I scanned the house with a thermographic camera, seeing how many people were in the house, what sex, and how big they were.

I was getting nowhere. I smiled a little when I realized it was Stephanie's voice I was hearing in my head. She was the one who would always insist we were getting nowhere. I would remind her that we needed to be patient. She was never patient. Somehow, Steph always lucked into finding her skips. She just followed her nose. She went where her curiosity took her.

I buckled down for another pass on a new street. I didn't think this street looked promising. But it was an inviting street lined with trees that swayed in a light breeze. I it was a beautiful summer night. I was trying to feel a little closer to Steph in that simple act, following this route, following my curiosity instead of my intellect. I let go of the expectation of finding my skip tonight. I rolled down my windows, set down the equipment, and just let the breeze blow into me. I was going to miss her.

I rolled to a stop under a drooping elm in the middle of the block and turned off the engine. There were streetlights at both ends of the block, but I sat in the dark shadow in between. A dog barked in the distance. A back door shut. A trash can lid opened and shut. The back door opened and shut again. Suburbia. What a strange life.

I smiled, amused that the mere thought of Stephanie had me sitting there, wasting time like an idiot. I thought about her hair, her eyes, he laugh, her smile. I thought about how infuriating and stubborn she could be. I though about how often she had made me smile, even laugh. Then I thought of how often I had looked for her when she'd gone missing, how many times we'd been shot at, how many times we'd needed stitches. I had just seen packets of burn ointment sticking out of her purse.

She would be safe now. That was all I had wanted for her, wasn't it?

The breeze blew in again, and I tried to clear my mind.

A police car cruised into my field of vision as he turned onto the street two blocks down. I started up the engine and drove off. The cop followed, so I took it nice and easy out of town, headed back to Trenton.

When I got to the control room, Tank was waiting for me. I followed him into my office, and he shut the door.

"Well?" I asked, sliding behind my desk.

Tank didn't sit. "You got made," he said, half amused, half seriously worried about me.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh, yeah?"

"By a woman. Costanza called."

I remembered the cop in Mt. Holly, and put two and two together. I must have looked amused.

"You were sloppy, and you took too long." Tank was not amused.

I nodded, closed my eyes, and leaned back in the chair. "Yeah, I know. Cop followed me out of town."

"No shit." Tank decided it was safe to sit down. "You didn't get your man, either."

"Nope."

"Maybe you need to get out of town for awhile." He was suggesting that I take a government sponsored vacation.

"Already on the list," I told him.

"Good." With that, he got up to leave.

"Did you say a woman?" I asked. Tank nodded, as if I should be ashamed of myself. "In Mt. Holly?" He nodded again. "How did she know me? What else did Costanza say?"

"She sent pictures of you, taken at night – at night, man - through the open window of the car. Tinted windows are tinted for a reason. Apparently, they were really good pictures, because Costanza made the ID based on a description of the vehicle and a fax copy of the picture sent over from Mt. Holly PD." He shook his head sadly. "Tinted windows, and you've got them down," he muttered.

"You get a name?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Run it. I just want to be sure…"

"Already did. She's clean. Probably just thinks she's Neighborhood Watch."

"And?"

"Helen Asher, 28. DWF [divorced white female]. Goes by Elena [pronounced el-AY-nuh]. Moved here from Pennsylvania two or three years ago."

"I want to see it."

Tank tossed the file onto my desk. "I'll be around if you need me." He let the door slam behind him.

I pushed open the file and looked at the address search. I paged through an average credit report. Elena Asher had held a lot of jobs, but the report showed steady employment. None appeared to be career level jobs. A few rough patches financially, but she'd paid all her debts. She had been holding steady for the last few years. No reported alimony. No children. Family in Pennsylvania. The DMV report was last. I'd seen her 1995 Black Mustang GT. It was unimpressive, but at least it was black. I turned to the last page.

Driver's license photos are always unnatural. Most are unflattering due to the fluorescent lighting overhead competing with the glaring spotlight attached to the camera. There are beautiful people who photograph like movie stars every time, in any light. Sometimes the subject comes off frighteningly nerdy, particularly if there's a glare on their glasses. But more often than not the person looks washed out, and ultimately forgettable.

Elena was utterly forgettable. The shirt was plain. Her short, dark brown hair was plain. Her smile was kind but not shining through her light brown eyes. I expected her eyes to jump off the page, but she wasn't expressing anything to the camera. She had "leave me alone" written all over her, followed by a polite "please". She was just a nice woman who had called the cops on me for sitting in front of her house too long.

I turned back over the work history. She was last reported to be working at a food processing plant in an industrial park between Mt. Holly and Trenton. She was paying college loans. From the looks of the dollar amount she'd graduated after four years. She was making good money, but had been working two jobs along the way. Hard worker. Hard life.

The words "skip trace" in her job descriptions caught my eye and my reaction took me by surprise. A ripple of excitement shot through me. I knew I had found my way in. She'd been a skip tracer for a collections company for two years. I'd been in need of a good skip tracer ever since Silvio moved back to Miami. Steph had filled in for a while, but it didn't last long.

Steph had opened my eyes to the benefits of having a woman on board at Rangeman. Sometimes I went on investigations with her. People would open up and talk to her – trust her – that would never talk to me. I got information from people by intimidation and, sometimes, physical assault. Steph got information for a Coke and a smile. She was also surprisingly well connected. Steph knew everybody who lived in the Burg, and if she didn't have the goods, she knew who did. She was tapped in to a network of women who worked in every office in Trenton. There were days those women made the CIA look like amateurs. Their only problem was that none of them were capable of the kind of violence necessary to scare off the crazies. That's why Steph became a target time and time again.

Still, I thought it would be useful to have a woman like that working full-time for Rangeman. I would handle things differently this time. Elena looked to be very bright, obviously vigilant. If I kept her off the streets and she could keep a lower profile than the front page of the paper, she would be a real asset to Rangeman.

Bringing Elena on board would also help my image. In the wake of Steph and Morelli getting engaged, it might soften the local gossip and preserve my bad ass image if it appeared to the man on the street – literally – that Steph and I weren't really in a relationship. It might also take the target off of Steph and allow her and Morelli to live in safety.

I closed the file and hit the intercom, calling Tank back into my office. We had work to do.