'Hug the wall and don't move a muscle. Keep your hands up where I can see them.'
Hannah frowned as she followed his orders. His voice sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She was still trying to identify it when a snowball splattered harmlessly over her head, raining snow down on the top of her stocking cap.
'Gotcha!'
The moment the man laughed, his voice was paired with a freckled face in Hannah's mind and she whirled around angrily. 'Greg Canfield! Of all the idiotic, senseless. . .'
'Sorry, Hannah,' Greg interrupted her tirade. 'I saw you walking to your truck and I couldn't resist. Are you mad at me?'
'I should be. You scared me half to death!' Hannah gave him a reluctant smile. When they'd been in third grade, Greg Canfield had made a practice of lying in wait and pelting her with snowballs on her way home from school. Not one to take things lying down, Hannah had fought back. She'd landed her share of cold missiles that had dripped icy snow down Greg's neck, and their snowball battles had lasted all winter, despite dire warnings from both mothers. When fourth grade had begun, Greg and Hannah had called a truce and they'd become friends. Hannah had been very disappointed when Greg's parents had moved to Colorado, pulling Greg out of school before they entered the ninth grade.
All through high school, Hannah had thought about Greg and how much easier her social life would have been if she'd had a friend of the opposite sex. She'd even imagined that they might have been a lot more than just friends until she'd heard that Greg had married his high school girlfriend right after graduation.
'It's good to see you again, Hannah.'
'Same here. . . I think,' Hannah responded, wondering why Greg was here. His grandmother, Mrs. Canfield, was one of her downstairs neighbors, but it was too early for a visit. 'You're not going to wake up your grandmother, are you?'
'Of course not.' Greg stepped forward to brush the snow from her cap. 'Grandma always sleeps until nine.'
Hannah was even more confused. 'Then what are you doing out here so early?'
'I woke up when the furnace went out and I went down to the basement to fix it. It was simple, just a loose connection. I didn't want Grandma to wake up to a cold house.'
'You're living with your grandmother now?'
'It's just temporary. I had to stick around to tie up some loose ends and the house sold a lot faster than I expected. You never got out to my store at the mall, did you?'
Hannah felt a twinge of guilt. Her former classmate had moved back to the area a little over a year ago. He'd bought a house in a neighboring town and opened an import store at the Tri-County Mall. 'I'm sorry, Greg. I really meant to drive out to see it, but the time was never right.'
'You should have come for my closeout sale. I had some incredible bargains.'
'I heard. Andrea was there and she said she practically bought you out. I'm sorry your store closed, Greg.'
'Water under the bridge,' Greg said with a shrug. 'Retail really wasn't my thing anyway. The hours were too long, and dealing with my suppliers was a nightmare.'
Hannah felt a bit uncomfortable. She really didn't know what to say to someone who'd lost his business. 'How about your wife? Is she living with your grandmother, too?'
'No. Annette flew to Denver right after the house sold. That's where her parents live.'
Hannah nodded, wondering if Greg's wife had bailed out on him. She'd met Annette only once, and she'd been left with the impression that Greg's wife spent money as fast or faster than he could make it. It hadn't taken Annette more than three minutes to inform Hannah that she'd been a classmate of Greg's at one of Colorado's most prestigious private schools, and that her parents lived on an estate in an exclusive suburb of Denver.
With a start, Hannah realized that Greg was gazing at her expectantly, and she responded with the first thing that popped into her mind. 'Will you be staying in town for the Winter Carnival?'
'I wouldn't miss it.' Greg started to grin, the same friendly grin Hannah recalled from her childhood, and the one she'd hoped would be smiling down at her in her senior prom picture. 'It's a great chance to see some of the kids I used to know. Maybe we can all get together for dinner at the Lake Eden Inn.'
'That would be great,' Hannah agreed. The inn's owners, Dick and Sally Laughlin, had agreed to stay open for the Winter Carnival crowd. Between the Hartland Flour Bake- off last November and the party crowds at Christmas, the inn had generated good winter business. Sally had told Hannah that if the Winter Carnival turned into an annual event, they might be able to stay open year-round.
Greg glanced at his watch and frowned slightly. 'Let's try to get together later, Hannah. I'd love to stand here and chew the fat, but it's almost time for me to go to work.'
'You're working in Lake Eden?' Hannah was surprised that Greg had taken a temporary job. Perhaps his closeout sale hadn't gone very well.
'I'm working out of Grandma's condo and it's going just great. I've made more money in the past three weeks than I ever made in retail.'
'Really?' Hannah was pleased for him. 'What are you doing?'
'On-line stock trading. All I need is a computer and a modem and I can work anywhere.'
Though Hannah was certainly no expert, she knew something about on-line stock trading. Dick Laughlin, a former stockbroker in Minneapolis, had written a series of articles about it for the Lake Eden Journal. 'But isn't day- trading risky?'
'Only if you don't know what you're doing. You ought to try it. I could give you some tips.'
'Not me. I don't have any money to spare. Everything I have is tied up in The Cookie Jar.'
'But you don't need a lot of venture capital to get started. And you can always borrow the money and pay it back when your stock hits.'
'Is that what you did?'
'No. I took the proceeds from my closeout sale and put every cent in Redlines. They're the hottest new Internet provider. When it peaked yesterday morning, I sold.'
'And you made money?'
'I tripled my original investment, and it was more than enough to payoff my creditors. I put the rest of my profits in some other hot stocks, and they were way up at closing yesterday. I've got a system, Hannah. I figure that by the time I leave for Denver, I'll be worth close to a million.'
The doubts in Hannah's mind grew by leaps and bounds. Dick Laughlin had called day-trading the newest form of gambling, and he'd warned of the consequences of investing borrowed money. Greg thought he had a system, and he'd been lucky once, but what if that system failed? Hannah was reminded of the spots on late-night television that advertised a sure-fire system for winning at blackjack. She figured that if a gambler really had a winning system, he wouldn't need to peddle books he'd written about it.
'I've got to run, Hannah. I want to be on-line when the market opens in New York. Sorry about that snowball.'
Greg waved as he headed around the side of the building, and Hannah waved back. Then she walked down the stairs to the underground parking structure, feeling very uneasy. It was just as Dick had written in his articles. Some day-traders did make money playing the market, but there were others who guessed wrong and lost. At least Greg had paid off his creditors and he was only gambling with his profits.
Hannah went to the strip of outlets that ran along the garage wall and unplugged the cord that fed electricity to her head-bolt heater. She wound the cord around her front bumper, unlocked the door to her candy-apple red Suburban with 'THE COOKIE JAR' lettered in gold on both sides, and climbed in behind the wheel.
The interior of her truck was frigid. Hannah was careful to breathe through her nose so she wouldn't fog up the inside of the windshield as she started the engine and backed out of her parking space. She drove up the ramp to ground level, flicked on her headlights, and took the winding street that led out of the complex. Her tires swished through the snow that had fallen during the night, as she broke trail for the other residents who would follow her tracks in an hour or two. Her truck was the only vehicle moving, and everything was dark and quiet. It was always like this on winter mornings, and Hannah often felt as if she were the sole survivor in a frozen wasteland.
As she approached Old Lake Road, she spotted headlights and flashing blue lights in the distance. Her sense of isolation vanished with a roar as a county snowplow lumbered by.
