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hadn’t claimed to be a boy, but she was tall and she knew how to walk and talk like one when she needed to. Plus Cory was one of those names that could belong to a boy or a girl and hers even had the more boylike spelling.
    If she got out of this tonight, hopefully that would stand her in good stead, since it would be way harder to track down a boy tagger than a girl.
    She was already hauling ass when she heard the fire escape rattle beneath the bad guy’s weight, but the adrenaline that spiked through her bloodstream at the sound acted like a turbo boost as she raced back the way she had come. She jumped down the three-foot drop to the next building, raced across that roof, then dropped another couple feet to the dentist’s office roof. Reaching the edge, she plopped onto her butt, rolled, grasped the rim of the roof and dropped, bending her knees to soften the impact when she hit ground.
    She still had to put a hand down to catch herself on the tiny patch of grass fronting the office and her feet scrambled in the dormant flower border before she gained some purchase and sprinted like a bat out of hell toward Forty-fifth. Reaching the main east-west arterial, she cut across a gas station lot, then slowed down and eased into a shadow as the wail of a cop siren split the night. A second later a blue-and-white flashed past, red lights swirling.
    Passing only two students weaving unsteadily down the sidewalk, she left the shopping district behind, casting glances over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She slid through the neighborhood, jumping fences and cutting through yards. It wasn’t until she was blocks away that she slowed down and tried to collect herself so she could make a plan to get back home. She had to arrive before her mother, or Mom would go ballistic. And not just about her being out on her own this time of night, but over her disguise.
    Which brought back the way she’d misrepresented herself to the shop-owner people, which in turn made her stomach drop. She didn’t even know why she’d stayed in guy character, except that it was a form of protection. Girls were more vulnerable on the street. So if Danny G. and Henry found out, her cover was blown.
    And, okay, she admitted that maybe she’d hoped the whole thing would just go away and nobody would ever have to know the difference.
    But of course it hadn’t, so now she had to show up tomorrow as herself. Because it was one thing to pull off acting like a guy for short periods of time in dim lighting. It was something else again to try it in broad daylight for God knew how long. The woman who had contacted her about making reparation said to plan on being at her beck and call for as long as she deemed fit.
    So it presented a problem—the guys were going to find out she was a girl. She had a hunch that Danny G. maybe already knew, but he was a quiet, self-contained guy who mostly kept to himself, so she didn’t fear him talking. Henry, on the other hand, would probably shoot his mouth off all over town. Soon everybody would know that her alter ego CaP, assumed to be a guy, wasn’t. And that would blow her one ace card: the fact that the henchman wouldn’t be looking for a female.
    Hell, if he was even still looking for anybody at all. Maybe she was worrying over nothing. Maybe he’d come to the right conclusion—that she was too smart, not to mention scared, to tell anyone what she had seen.
    But a shiver rippled down her spine and she shuddered. Because that was a lot of maybes.
    And she had a bad feeling this wasn’t going to go away that easily.
     
    U P ON THE Ave, Bruno Arturo was pulling his cell phone from his leather jacket pocket as he strode toward Diamond Parking to retrieve his car. He punched in an auto number, then stopped on the sidewalk for a second, rubbing his free hand over his jaw as the phone rang on the other end.
    It was picked up on the second ring. “Schultz.”
    “We got trouble, boss.”
    “Those