Tall, Dark And Texan. Jane Sullivan

      4

      A FEW MINUTES LATER, Wolfe had given Wendy the gist of his plan, and she felt a tremor of excitement at the very thought of it. A hooker. He wanted her to play a hooker.

      Hot damn. Character roles were so much fun.

      Wolfe went to the kitchen, grabbed a box from a cabinet, then brought it back and dumped its contents onto the coffee table.

      “What’s that?” she asked.

      “Breakfast.”

      She picked up one of the bars. “Protein Power?”

      “Eighteen vitamins and minerals. Lots of fiber.”

      “Any room for flavor in there?”

      “No pain, no gain.”

      She unwrapped one and bit into it. It tasted like sawdust and sand pebbles held together with Elmer’s glue. In the time it took her to gag one down, Wolfe had eaten three. She’d barely disposed of her wrapper in the trash when he grabbed her clothes from the dryer, tossed them to her and told her to get ready.

      After she dressed, Wendy asked Wolfe if she could make a long-distance call, promising to pay him for it out of the hundred dollars she was going to earn. She mentally ticked off her siblings in her head, finally deciding to call her oldest sister, Terri. Terri was levelheaded and nonreactionary and would tend to ask fewer questions than anyone else in her family. Good thing, since Wendy intended to fudge a little on the truth of her situation.

      When Terri came on the line, Wendy told her that since she’d gotten sidetracked in Dallas because of the storm, she’d decided to stay there with a friend for a few days. True to Terri’s nature, she didn’t question a thing. She merely made Wendy promise to call her as soon as she left for Los Angeles again.

      Wendy hung up the phone, glad she’d bought some time. Now all she had to do was formulate a plan to get to the West Coast that didn’t involve taking money from her family.

      Minutes later Wendy was following Wolfe down that big, creaky elevator to the first floor of the warehouse, where she was relieved to discover that the motorcycle wasn’t the only vehicle he owned. First in line was a nondescript white van. Next to it sat a gleaming late-model SUV, which she’d have salivated over if she hadn’t seen the black Porsche hiding on the other side of it.

      “Oh, wow,” Wendy gushed, running her hand over its fender. “Now, this is a gorgeous car.”

      “Hands off. We’re taking the Chevy.”

      “Chevy?”

      Wendy had been so preoccupied with the sports car that she hadn’t noticed vehicle number four. Like a mangy mutt sidled up next to a purebred, an ancient Chevy Malibu sat next to the Porsche, its crunched left rear fender crisscrossed with rust and its yellow paint faded almost to white.

      Wendy blinked with confusion. “You have a Porsche, and you’re driving that?”

      “We’re going into a bad area. We have to fit the profile of the neighborhood.”

      “So when do you drive the other cars?”

      “The van’s for surveillance, and the others depend on what I’m doing or who I’m after.”

      Wendy looked longingly at the Porsche as she slid into the passenger seat of the Chevy. They left the warehouse and headed toward the police station. An hour later Wendy had filed the obligatory theft report with a very bored looking detective who had a splatter of coffee on his tie and a comb-over that hid nothing but his self-respect. It was pretty clear all around that she stood a better chance of getting hit by a meteor at midnight than recovering her car and belongings. It was a sickening feeling knowing she had literally nothing in the world but the clothes on her back, but she refused to give in to it. Instead, she let excitement take over.

      After all, she was getting to play a hooker.

      They left the police station. A few minutes later, Wolfe pulled into the parking lot of the Trinity River Thrift Store. He parked the Malibu in a space near the front door, giving Wendy a nice view of the establishment’s dirty sign, dirty windows and dirty neighbors, squashed as it was between an adult video store and a condom shop.

      They went inside. The place smelled like a hundred-year-old attic. Shelves were filled with various garage-sale items—lamps, glassware, dishes, bookshelves. Lining the back of the store were minor to major appliances that were not-so-gently used, along with a genuine antique walnut-veneer bedroom suite complete with missing hardware and beer bottle rings. And the clothes. It looked as if every woman in every sleazy trailer park in Texas had cleaned out her closets and donated them to an even bigger charity than herself.

      The clerk, a twenty-something woman dressed in a pair of jeans and a too-tight sweater, came out of the back room. She had naturally frizzy but unnaturally blond hair and had clearly been the victim of a recent cosmetics counter explosion.

      The woman took one look at Wolfe and stopped short, her mascara-laden eyes slowly widening as her gaze panned upward. Then she glanced at the cash register, as if she was expecting him to haul out a gun and demand all her money. Wendy didn’t blame her. Her first look at Wolfe had been equally overwhelming.

      “She needs clothes,” Wolfe told the clerk, nodding toward Wendy. “Something flashy and trashy. You got anything like that?”

      The clerk swallowed hard, as if trying to dislodge a boulder from her throat. Finally she pointed to a rack a few feet behind them that was filled with sparkles and spangles. Wolfe strode over, flipped through the clothes and pulled out an animal-print micro-miniskirt. Wendy took it from him, staring at it in disbelief.

      “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t wear this. Synthetic leopards are an endangered species.”

      “You’re playing a streetwalker, not a high-dollar call girl.”

      She held it up, twisting it one direction, then another. “I don’t think this will even cover my rear end.”

      “Exactly.”

      Wolfe grabbed a minuscule black top with gold sparkles and handed it to her. She stretched it a couple of times. “Well, this’ll fit my left pinkie. What else do you have?”

      “Just put it on. What size shoes do you wear?”

      “Five.”

      He dug through a nearby bin, tossing shoes left and right before coming up with a pair of monstrous black platforms. If this job included surveillance through third-story windows, she was going to be all set.

      The clerk pointed her toward a short hallway leading to a dressing room, where Wendy wiggled out of her jeans and into the skirt. Then she tossed her shirt and bra aside and pulled the stretchy top over her head and into place. She turned, looked into the mirror and froze.

      Yes, the skirt was short. The shirt was tight. The shoes were stratospheric. But the clothes had caused a definite transformation