Paradise Lost by J. A. Jance Page A

jacket.
    “Want one?” she asked.
    Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.
    “Come on,” Dora urged. “What are you, chicken? Afraid your mom will find out and put you in jail?”
    For the second time that evening, Jenny was aware of the burden of being the sheriff’s daughter.
    She wanted nothing more than to be accepted as a regular kid. This dare, made by someone she couldn’t stand, was more than Jennifer Ann Brady could resist. “Okay,” she said impulsively.
    “Give me one. Where do you get them?” she asked, as Dora pulled out a lighter. She lit her own cigarette first, then she lit Jenny’s.
    “I steal them from my mother’s purse,” Dora admitted, inhaling deeply. “She smokes so much that she never misses them as long as I only take a few at a tine.”
    Jenny took a few tentative puffs, holding the smoke in her mouth and then blowing it out again.
    Even that was enough to make her eyes water.
    “That’s not how you do it,” Dora explained. “You’re supposed to inhale—breathe the smoke into your lungs—like this.”
    Page 26

    She sucked a drag of smoke into her lungs, held it there, and then blew it out in a graceful plume. Jenny’s game effort at imita-tion worked, but only up to a point. Moments later she found herself bent over, choking and gagging.
    “You’re not going to barf, are you?” Dora Matthews demanded.
    “I think so,” Jenny managed.
    “Well, give me your cigarette, then. Don’t let it go to waste.”
    Jenny handed over the burning cigarette. Embarrassed, she stum-bled away from where Dora sat, heaving as she went. Twenty yards farther on, she bent over a bush and let go. In the process she lost the contents of her sack lunch along with the popcorn and Orange Crush from the campfire. Finally, when there was nothing left in her system, Jenny lurched over to a nearby tree and stood there, leaning against the trunk, gasping and shivering and wishing she had some water so she could get the awful taste out of her mouth.
    “Are you all right?” Dora asked from behind her. She was still smoking one of the two cigarettes. The smell of the smoke was enough to make Jenny heave again, but she managed to stave off the urge.
    “I’m all right,” she said shakily.
    “You’ll be okay,” Dora told her. “The same thing happened to me the first time I tried it. You want an Altoid? I always keep some around so my mom can’t smell the smoke on my breath.”
    With shaking hands, Jenny gratefully accepted the proffered breath mint. “Thanks,” she said and meant it.
    The two girls stood there together for some time, while Jenny sucked on the breath mint and Dora finished smoking the rest of the remaining cigarette. When it was gone, Dora carefully ground out the butt with the sole of her shoe. “I wouldn’t want to start a fire,” she said with a laugh. “Somebody might notice. Then we would be in trouble.”
    They were quiet for a time. The only sound was the distant yip of a coyote, answered by another from even farther away. Then, for the first time that evening, a slight breeze stirred around them, blowing up into their faces from the valley floor below. As the small gust blew away the last of the dissipating cigarette smoke, Jenny noticed that another odor had taken its place.
    “There’s something dead out there,” she announced.
    “Dead,” Dora repeated. “How do you know?”
    Jennifer Ann Brady had lived on a ranch all her life. She recog-nized the distinctively ugly odor of carrion.
    “Because I can smell it, that’s how,” Jenny returned.
    The slight softening in Dora’s voice when she had offered the Altoid disappeared at once.
    “You’re just saying that to scare me, Jennifer Brady!” Dora declared. “You think that because they were saying all thatstuff about Apaches killing people and all, that you can spook me or Page 27

    something.”
    “No, I’m not,” Jenny insisted. “Don’t you smell it?”
    “Smell what?” Dora shot