The little girl nodded and pulled her shopping bag close. It held her brand new Lisa doll, which her mother had rejoiced to find on sale for only thirty-five bucks.

Ruth took the child's free hand in her own, her other carrying a heavy bag of sheets, towels, and a few dry goods from the food aisle, including a jar of spaghetti sauce and a box of noodles.

"Let's hurry," she cried, jogging across the parking lot during a letup in the deluge. Quickly, she opened the passenger door and guided the child into her seat. Next, she opened the door behind Jessie and heaved the shopping bag onto the crumpled tarp. Before the heavy rains could start again, she was in the driver's seat checking the seat belt on her daughter's side.

Ruth felt her stomach knot as two police cars pulled into the parking lot just as she reached the exit. Right this minute, she hadn't broken any laws, but all that was going to change tomorrow at six o'clock when she was due back at the restaurant with Jessie. They weren't coming for her, she knew; it was probably just someone in the store who had tried to pick up something without paying.

"Can I watch TV tonight?"

Ruth chuckled and shook her head in resignation. She hadn't even had a television at her other house. Instead, they played games and told stories, always finishing the night with the book of Jessie's choice. But life was different when the little girl had gone back to live with her father. Barbara Drummond used the television to keep her granddaughter occupied all day, and Skip spent virtually every evening at home in front of the tube; so despite Ruth's aversion, television was undeniably a part of her daughter's life.

"It's 'may I' and maybe for just a little while," she conceded. "Tell you what. We'll have some spaghetti; then you can watch TV while I'll put the new sheets on your bed. Maybe after that we'll find a book and have a story. Okay?"

That sounded pretty good and Jessie readily agreed.

Ruth was exhausted, even though they'd had a two-hour nap together that afternoon on the scratchy couch. It would take her a few days to get back on the right sleeping and eating schedule, but it was more important to get Jessie into a routine.

Finding the right turnoff in the dark proved a bit of an adventure, but soon, they were turning onto the gravel driveway, pulling around to park between the trailer and the house. Ruth turned off the lights and reached behind her to grab the heavy bag.

"Can you take Lisa?"

"Uh-huh," the little girl agreed, turning around as the interior light came on. "Mommy!"

"What?"

"Who's that?"

"Who's who?" Ruth turned in alarm to see what her daughter was talking about, nearly jumping out of her skin at the sight of a woman's bloody face.

"She has a hurt," the child observed.

"Jessie, I need you to run into the house, okay? Take Lisa and go now." Ruth was trembling with fright, and her maternal instincts were on high alert. She couldn't comprehend why this woman was in their car, but whoever she was, she was big trouble.

The four-year-old reluctantly got out of the car. "Who is it?" she turned and asked.

"I don't know. Go on inside," she repeated. Ruth had no idea what she was going to do. Clearly, she couldn't just ask Viv to call the police. The last thing she wanted was to call attention to herself on this, their first day in town.

Quietly, she climbed out of the car and opened the back door. She shook the woman gently, hoping like hell she was only asleep. What if she was dead!

To her relief, the woman shifted as though pulling away.

"Hey, wake up. Come on, wake up," she coaxed.

The eyes fluttered open and squinted against the dome light.

"Come on. You got in the wrong car or something." That was the only explanation that made any sense at all. "I can take you back, but you need to wake up."

"No," the woman moaned. "Can't go back."

"Look, you're hurt. You need to find your family, and see a doctor," she urged.

"I can't," she murmured.

"Come on, you can't stay here." Perhaps a threat would work. "I'm going to go call the police."

"No!" she pleaded, suddenly fully awake and obviously panicked. "No police, please."

Ruth knew it was an empty threat. With the stowaway unwilling to leave, she had few options open to her that wouldn't put her at the center of the very thing she needed to avoid. She couldn't very well drive back to the Wal-Mart and dump her in the parking lot. Thoughts of the store brought back the image of police cars pulling onto the lot. God, was this who they were looking for?

"Are the police after you?"

"Yes...," she was barely whispering, "trying to kill me. Please help me."

Kill her? Surely she didn't mean the police were trying to kill her. But by the battered face, it looked like somebody was. Ruth's sensibilities told her that she shouldn't get involved, but it was too late for that. Of all the cars in the lot, this woman had picked hers. Something else - her instincts, perhaps - said that she couldn't just turn the injured woman out; that a dreadful fate awaited her.

"Let's get you inside."

"Jessie, go outside and get the green blanket from the car. Bring it to my bedroom, okay?" Ruth was guiding the injured woman down the dark hallway to the bedroom in the back.

The child quickly ran back out to the car, returning with a plastic package almost too large for her to carry.

"That's it, honey. Good girl. Can you pull the plastic off?"

Ruth eased the woman down to sit on the edge of the bed, holding her upright with one hand while her other released the blanket from its packaging and flung it haphazardly across the center of the bed. Lifting the sides of the nylon poncho, she pulled it over the woman's head and dropped it on the floor. Without the cover, she could see the trail of blood running from the deep gash above the brow, and another splotch that covered her upper arm.

Wrapping an arm around the sagging shoulders, Ruth edged her backward onto the bed, propping a foam pillow beneath her head. Then she lifted the feet and swung them to the end of the bed.

"Sweetie, I'm going to let you watch television by yourself for awhile, okay? I need to help this lady."

Jessie nodded, clearly afraid of this stranger. "Will she hurt us?"

"No, honey, she isn't going to hurt us. We're going to help her feel better. Then she'll be able to go back to her house by herself." Ruth hoped it was that simple. It was bad enough to have a bleeding stranger in her home; it was worse having someone like that so close to Jessie.

She walked her daughter back to the living room, settled her into the recliner with a carton of juice, and tuned in a children's channel on the TV. Next, she unpacked her first aid supplies from the box of toiletries and cosmetics in the bathroom. There wasn't much: some plastic bandages with pictures of cartoon characters, a few cotton balls, tape, anti-biotic cream, and rubbing alcohol. This was the standard kit for Jessie's skinned knees and elbows, and she hoped it would be enough to treat this mysterious woman's injuries.

The first priority was to stop the bleeding above the woman's eye and on her arm. Filling a mixing bowl with water, Ruth wet a cloth and began to wipe away the dried blood. The cut was only about an inch wide, just above the brow, but it went all the way to the bone. From the bruising on the forehead, it looked as though she'd been hit with something blunt that split the skin. Pressing the woman's shoulder to the bed to hold her still, Ruth used a cotton ball to dab the alcohol directly into the wound.

The injured woman moaned without opening her eyes.

"Yeah, I know it hurts. I'm sorry," she soothed. Next, she gently applied the anti-biotic cream and closed the wound with two narrow strips of tape. The woman shivered and Ruth folded the blanket over her. She would deal with the arm after she fed her child.

"Are you going to sleep with that hurt lady?" Jessie asked innocently as she crawled into bed.

"No, honey. Tonight I'm going to sleep on the couch like we did this afternoon."

"You can sleep in my bed," the child offered.

That was a tempting offer, but it wasn't fair to disrupt Jessie's sleep for a second night in a row. "You're sweet, little Megan," she smiled, nuzzling her daughter's hair. "And I love you. But I'll be okay on the couch."

"I love you too, Mommy."

Ruth pulled the door almost closed and headed back to the bigger bedroom to check on their patient. During dinner, she had become suddenly anxious that the woman might actually die in their trailer, and she'd jumped up to find her resting peacefully, but feverish. That, no doubt, was from being out in the rain.

With a fresh bowl of warm water, Ruth prepared to tend to the arm injury. Pulling the blanket back, she noticed for the first time that the woman was wearing some sort of rainproof jumpsuit. Why was she dressed to be out in the rain? Had she been riding a motorcycle? That was the most logical explanation, and maybe the pouring rain would then explain why she sought refuge in the car.

As she unsnapped the top, she saw a denim jacket underneath, and a white t-shirt under that. Starting with the boots, she carefully undressed her patient, stopping when she reached the jeans and t-shirt.

Carefully, she pushed up the reddened sleeve of the shirt, gasping in horror as the source of the blood was revealed: a swollen and discolored puncture wound, festering with infection. Was this a bullet wound? This, she realized, was the real source of the fever.

The overhead light in the room wasn't bright enough to allow a close inspection, so she retrieved a small lamp from the living room. Holding it close, she could barely make out something brown and solid in the center of the wound, a stick or something. Gently brushing her fingertip across the opening, she could feel a jagged point. Whatever it was, it needed to come out, and the hole needed to be cleaned.

Soaking a cotton ball with alcohol, she dripped a little of the fluid onto the wound, causing the woman to wake up and jerk away.

"Shhh, I'm trying to help you here. You need to relax."

"It's...a stick...broken."

"Yeah, I can see that. I'm going to have to try to pull it out, and it's going to hurt like hell."

"It already does," she gasped.

With the tweezers from her cosmetic bag, Ruth pinched the end of the stick and gently started to work it out. Unable to stand the pain, the injured woman flinched and tried to sit up.

"You have to be still. I'll be as careful as I can." With her left hand, she gently pressed the woman's collarbone and urged her back against the blanket. As the anguished face contorted in pain, Ruth tugged the stick, this time pulling it clean amidst a new flow of blood. That would help cleanse the wound, but the alcohol would be better. As she trickled it again directly into the wound, the woman flailed, her flesh on fire.

"Shhh, that's it. You can go back to sleep," Ruth soothed.

"These fuckers are the Keystone Cops," Akers groused into his cell phone. "'Urgent' means after they've had their goddamned donuts and taken a dump. Rollins was long gone before they ever got there." The agent was driving back to the city for the night. They would put out an APB tomorrow. The more time that lapsed, the more dangerous this got for everybody.

"Diaz went out right after the call, but she wasn't gone more than twenty minutes," Pollard reported. "And she came back alone."

"I don't trust that dyke. We're going to need some rookie backup to keep her under surveillance 24/7, home and office. Rollins will call her again. Hell, she might be stupid enough to walk into her office. We just need to make sure we're there when she does."

"Okay, I'll line up a couple of guys in the morning," the junior agent said. He didn't agree at all with the senior agent about Rollins being stupid. Hell, she'd slipped away from them three times already; not many people could say that.

CHAPTER 10.

AS TIRED AS she was, Ruth had expected a better night's sleep, even on the cramped couch. But the anxiety about being on the run, coupled with the presence of an injured stranger in their home, robbed her of the peace of mind she needed to completely rest. Now the sun was up, and it already looked as though today, it might actually shine.

It was Sunday. She'd give her right arm to know what was going on back in Madison today. Chances were no one had even missed her yet. Skip never contacted her over the weekend, and she'd told her friends at work that they planned to stay indoors and play. Friends rarely called when she had Jessie, not wanting to interrupt her time.

Coffee would be good, she thought, tossing back the thin blanket as she set her bare feet on the cold vinyl floor. All she had was a packet of instant that she'd nicked from work. They'd have to hit the grocery today.

As she shuffled over to the kitchen area, she was startled by a pounding on the door, accompanied by animated shouts from her landlady.

"Anybody up?"

Jesus! Flinging open the door, Ruth squinted in the light of day as she greeted a beaming Viv on the porch. How could people be so jolly at this hour of the morning?

"Still in bed, huh?"

"What time is it?" A brisk autumn breeze blew into the room, and she hugged herself as she shivered.

"It's almost nine o'clock."

"You're kidding!" Maybe she had slept better than she thought.

"You're just in time to witness the miracle of birth."

A still sleepy Jessie joined her mother at the door, wearing her favorite blue pajamas. "Puppies?" she asked excitedly.

"Yes, ma'am! They're coming now." Viv had told them both yesterday that Maggie was overdue.

"Can we go see?" the little girl begged.

"Sure. Let me get my...," the child stepped off the porch into Viv's waiting arms and was gone before she could blink, "shoes."

Before leaving, Ruth tiptoed down the hall to check on her patient. The cut over her eye had seeped a little, but all in all, it was a hell of a lot better than it had been last night. The arm looked better already, swathed in ointment and covered in a Fred Flintstone bandage. The woman had hardly moved in the night, and seemed to be resting without distress.

Ruth looked for the first time at the mysterious woman in her bed. Her face was pretty, despite the swollen eye that would probably be black by tomorrow. The hair was disheveled and stringy from being wet, but it was a nice shade of brown with auburn highlights. The woman was calm today, compared to the night before when she'd been agitated and anxious about no one knowing she was there. That was certainly an ironic coincidence, Ruth thought. Neither of them wanted anyone to know she was there. Now if they could just get her well and get her out before anyone...Shit! Please don't say anything, Jessie.

Ruth donned her shoes and robe, grabbing the same for her daughter before she bolted across the yard to the back door. In the utility room off the kitchen, Maggie was doing her thing as Viv, Jessie and proud papa Thor looked on in fascination.

"Look, Mommy, four puppies!"

"Here, put these on, sweetie." She handed the child her slippers and robe.

"And more on the way," Viv added, pressing a welcome mug of hot coffee into her tenant's hand. "You want cream or sugar?"

"No thanks. This is perfect. Thank you."

The black lab had produced two chocolates, one black, and one yellow offspring thus far.

"How many do you think she'll have?"

"A usual litter is anywhere between six and ten. I'm hoping for more because they'll fetch about four hundred dollars apiece."

"You're kidding! People really pay that much for a dog?" Ruth asked.

"Full-blooded Labradors aren't just any dog, I'll have you know. Thor's a champion, and Maggie's won Best of Opposite Sex three times."

"What does that mean?"