Hand of Fate by Lis Wiehl Page B

get you checked out. You and the baby and .. . who is this, anyway?"
    Allison stepped back. "Actually, I've just been to Good Sam. They said I was fine, the baby was fine, and"--she patted the girl's shoulder--"so is Estella."
    He bent toward the girl. She offered him a shy smile before turning her head and burying it against Allison's chest.
    "I found her outside the courthouse when they were evacuating downtown. She must have been with someone, but I couldn't see them, just this poor little girl crying all by herself. At that time we still thought the air was poisoned, so I picked her up and took her to Good Sam with me."
    Marshall cocked his head. "What do you mean, 'still thought the air was poisoned'? Isn't it?"
    Allison quickly told him what she had learned from Sally.
    Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. "Thank God. Even if it did bring the city to its knees, it could have been so much worse." He held out his arms. "Here, let me carry her the rest of the way."
    Estella's eyes widened. She clutched Allison so hard that her little fingers went white.
    "I guess she's not ready for that," Allison observed. The three of them started for home.
    When Marshall unlocked the front door, Allison's eyes fell on a note scrawled with a Sharpie and taped on the entryway wall. Allison, stay here. Looking for you. I love you.
    Tears closed Allison's throat. Marshall had charged out to find her, not knowing if he himself might be struck down. Again the experiences of the past hours washed over her, the terror and fear she hadn't allowed herself to feel. She was home; she was healthy; she wasn't dead or even sick. She and Marshall and the baby--and Estella--all of them safe.

    Chapter 11

Riverside Condominiums
    Cassidy walked in the door of her condo and went straight to her bedroom. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, she thought as she fell more than lay across the unmade bed. It was all she could do to muster the energy to kick off her shoes. Well, Jim's shoes, really, but he wasn't in any position to ask for them back. She had never bothered to change, knowing that Andy would frame the shot so that it didn't show her feet.
    All day, as she reported on the chaos downtown, Cassidy had longed to be home, to be by herself, to have nothing around her but silence. And the Riverside Condominiums were quiet. The builders had broken ground at the height of the real estate mania, when property was appreciating 15 percent every year. Everyone wanted in. They held lotteries to choose who was allowed to buy, and Cassidy had felt very lucky when her number came up. She hollowed out her retirement fund, already imagining the kind of return she would get. Only suckers would hold on to conservative stocks when there was so much money to be made in real estate.
    Six months later, the bottom fell out of the market. Roughly half the units in her building remained unoccupied, bought by speculators who had thought they could flip them for a fast profit. A lot o f i nvestors had ended up walking away from the debt, giving their units back to the bank. As a result, the building was often eerily silent.
    Now that she was finally by herself, Cassidy realized there was a big problem with being alone. There was nothing to distract her from what had happened earlier in the day.
    When she closed her eyes, she saw people running past her, heard the screams and the sirens. It was almost like hallucinating, she could see the people so vividly. An old man in a black fedora clutched his throat and fell to his knees. A young woman with a half-dozen silver piercings begged Cassidy to tell her if they were all dying. A boy carrying a skateboard ran out into the street, and before she could even call out a warning, he was hit by a huge blue boat of an Oldsmobile.
    Her eyes flew open. They're not real, she told herself. Forget them and go to sleep. But when she tried, she saw fresh horrors. It was like her overtaxed brain was coming up with new