She nearly had him when he walked in the door but the luck wasn’t with her and she didn’t make a clean cut so she had to run after him down the hall and up the stairs. He tried to drive a knee into her when she grabbed him but she knew that was coming and took it against her hip and no harm done except maybe a bruise where it wouldn’t show. Once she got her hands on him there was no problem though it wasn’t as quiet as she maybe would have liked. She left the knife in the sink under running water and her clothes in the incinerator. Five minutes later she was out and away with nothing to show she’d ever been there except the body at the top of the stairs and that was okay.

The weather had snapped and gone cold and gray, full of thunderstorms that slashed at the palm trees and moved on without clearing the air any. She shivered in her spring coat and wished she had a pair of gloves that did more than cover her fingers.