Bending the Rules by Susan Andersen Page A

politician.
    But, oh, she was torn about having her proposal suddenly accepted. Half of her was thrilled at this opportunity to reach the three teenagers.
    The other half thought she was freaking nuts to put herself anywhere in de Sanges’s vicinity.
    Oh, no. The latter thought put a firm halt to the low-grade panic she’d been experiencing ever since she’d opened her mouth and started threatening him, and her spine snapped straight. Oh, no, no, no. She was neither weak-willed nor easily pushed around, and the idea that she should be wary of or intimidated by a little one-on-one time spent with the detective put her back up but good.
    For God’s sake, she wasn’t some impressionable fourteen-year-old ruled by her hormones. Yes, he was dark and steely and, okay, the power of attraction she felt was formidable. But she was a big girl, one who was motivated to preserve—and hopefully enhance—the well-being of those kids. And contrary to what de Sanges might believe based on tonight and the first time they’d met, she actually did know how to act professional.
    So he had better just watch his step. Because she was a woman with a mission.
    But one who was going to be very careful never to get within touching range of that man again.

CHAPTER FIVE
And I’m supposed to be an artist, with an eye for detail. Some eye. Because the whole Cory-being-a-girl thing—I sure didn’t see that one coming!
    F OURTEEN -and-three-quarters-year-old Cory Capelli pulled her newsboy cap down low, flipped her father’s battered leather jacket collar up and veered away from the group she’d been hanging with on the Ave in the U district. She liked catching up occasionally with other graffiti artists and taggers to hear the latest gossip about who was doing what and listen to everyone one-up each other’s lies. But she did her best work alone.
    It was a policy she should have remembered before she hooked up with Danny G. and Henry Whatshis-name two weeks ago. Danny alone would have been fine. He did some of the best storytelling graffiti around, and Cory considered herself more of an artist than a tagger. She might not style elaborate wall paintings but her tag, CaP, was a work of art in its own right with its fat, two-dimensional, multicolored letters and her trademark cap hanging from the lowercase a. She considered it a world removed from scrawling quick and dirty chicken scratches on bus-stop signs or buildings or messing up someone else’s work. She’d been working on some graphic novel–type illustrations in her sketch pad at home, but she hadn’t worked up the confidence yet to give them a public try. Which was why she’d wanted to team up with Danny G.
    Henry, on the other hand, was one of the chicken scratchers. So when he’d attached himself to their plan to cover a block of buildings together, in a neighborhood they weren’t familiar with, she hadn’t known how to say that didn’t work for her.
    She definitely needed to learn that, whatchamacallit…assertiveness stuff. Because just look where her silence had gotten her. Could you say busted? The three of them were now scheduled to meet some do-gooder tomorrow morning to paint over what they’d done. Whoop-de-do, Cory thought, spotting a nice wall and melting into the space between the dentist’s office hosting it and the jewelry store next door. Like that was how she wanted to spend her Saturday morning.
    Still, it beat getting a record and being sent to juvie, which would just finish the job of Mom’s already broken heart. And Cory got it—she really did—that relatively speaking, she and Danny G. and Henry had lucked out with those people whose buildings they’d tagged. Well, Henry had tagged. He’d managed to scrawl his crap over every workable surface before she or Danny could so much as pull out a can of paint.
    Okay, that wasn’t quite true. They’d both had their cans out when the guy from the store across the street had busted them. Henry might have