Page 30 of Near Miss

“It’s charming,” Carly said. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I’ve never seen anyone impress Bill Eggers so much or so fast,” Stone said. “Come on, I’ll show you the house.”

He gave Carly the ten-cent tour, with Matilda tagging along, then sat them down for a cognac in the study. “Is all this going to your head?” he asked Carly.

“Of course, it is,” she replied. “I’m impressed with myself.”

“Honestly, I’m a bit impressed with you, too,” Matilda said.

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to remember everything I’ve told you?” Stone asked. “All my advice?”

“I have a photographic memory,” she said, “and it doesn’t have to be written down.”

“There’s a wrinkle I haven’t told you about,” Stone said.

“What’s that?”

“Somebody is trying to kill Matilda and me, and you have to be careful not to get in the way.”

“When I met you last,twopeople were trying to kill you, and we managed to handle that.”

Matilda looked at Stone, surprised. “How often do people want you dead?”

“Too often.”

“Well,” Carly said, “your present status sounds like an improvement over last time.”

“I suppose it is, in some ways, but the would-be killer employs a number of people to do his killing for him.”

“Why don’t you get Ed Rawls to shoot them for you? It worked in Maine.”

“It may come to that,” Stone said, “but we don’t want a lot of people being shot in Dino’s jurisdiction. He has to live with the statistics.”

“Are you able to arm me?”

“I don’t know. Can you restrain yourself?”

“I’m a model of self-restraint,” she said.

“First, we’ll have to get Dino to get you a license to carry.”

“He can do that?”

“He’s the police commissioner. He can hurry the process without breaking any laws. We just did so for Matilda here. I’ll get you an application to fill out.”

“In the meantime, I can kill with a single blow.” She held up a thumb. “I took a self-defense course.”

“That makes you doubly dangerous,” Stone said. “Be careful what you do with that thumb while we’re waiting for your license to come through.”

“I’ll practice thumb restraint,” she said.

After seeing Carly off to her new apartment, Stone and Matilda retired to the bedroom, where Matilda immediately slipped out of her dress and into Stone’s bed.

She eyed him hungrily. “Don’t keep a girl waiting.”

He did not, and she rewarded him with even more enthusiasm than their previous sessions.

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