Hardbingers

7

Gia hung up her coat and rubbed her hands together. Cold out here.

She'd put Vicky on the school bus and had scurried back to the warmth of the house. She filled the kettle and turned on the TV. A little tea, a little news, and she'd get to work on the studies for that dust jacket.

Over the years Gia had developed good working relationships with the art directors of a number of publishing houses. Sometimes she received detailed instructions on what they wanted; other times, like this one, she received no directive beyond, "Something bucolic, with a house in the woods."

She'd dipped into the manuscript they'd sent her—a dreary tale about a middle-aged college professor's extramarital affair with a student—until she found an obsessively detailed description of the woodsy retreat that served as their trysting place.

Now all she had to do was come up with a couple of rough ideas, dab a little paint on them to show the color scheme, and bring them in. The art director would choose one, make his comments on composition and color, and then Gia would begin the actual painting. Sometimes it was a chore, sometimes it was fun, but either way, commercial art paid the bills, leaving her time for her personal paintings.

But working on anything today would be difficult. Maybe impossible. Jack hovered over her thoughts. She wondered how he was—where he was—and if everything was going as planned. He'd sailed off into the unknown not for himself, but for the baby. He was trading everything he'd struggled to become, everything he was, for fatherhood.

She blinked back a tear and flipped through the channels until she came to Headline News. She stopped there for a quick rundown of what was going on in the world. Too-familiar footage of the smoking crater in the Staten Island storage facility flashed on the screen. She was raising the remote to switch the channel when the scene shifted to a view of a brick-fronted apartment house. "Bay Ridge" popped onto the upper left corner of the screen.

"—BI officials have revealed that traces of the same compound that caused the Staten Island explosion were found in an apartment in this building in Brooklyn along with Arabic writing on the walls."

Gia felt her gut clench—and that seemed to spur a kick from the baby. The so-called "terrorism expert" who followed didn't make her feel any better.

"From the amount of plastic explosive estimated in the Staten Island blast, I think we can assume that these individuals were out to do a lot of damage. Nothing like nine-eleven, of course, but considerable."

Gia rose and turned off the kettle. What if there were other "individuals" with other caches of explosives? If so, she didn't want Vicky locked down in a school if all hell broke loose.

She hurried to the closet. It wasn't rational, and it was most likely an over-reaction, but she didn't care. She wanted her little girl with her today.

Looked like Vicky would get a second day off this week.

Gia's hand stopped in midreach for her coat.

A second day off… like yesterday. The explosion had occurred the night before, and Jack had been intent on keeping Vicky out of school. He'd said it was because he was leaving, but had there been more to it? In the demimonde he moved through he often picked up rumors and tidbits of news before they hit the papers.

She'd have to ask him when he got back. Right now she was going to catch a cab and head for Vicky's school.