Killjoy

of bed before she went downstairs, then Avery would never know what was going on.

Sometimes you had to do bad things to find out anything important. Peyton had told her that it wasn't awful bad to listen to other people talking as long as you didn't ever tell anyone what you heard.

The banging turned into pounding as the lady demanded that Grandma let her in.

Grandma opened the door, and Avery heard the lady shouting some more. She understood every word she said. Avery suddenly wasn't curious any longer. She was terrified. Throwing the sheet off and jumping to the floor, she dropped to her belly and crawled underneath the bed. She scooted up to the headboard and rolled into a ball with her knees tucked under her chin. She was a big girl, too big to cry. The tears streaming down her cheeks were just there because she was squeezing her eyes shut so tight. She cupped her hands over her ears to block out the terrible yelling.

Avery knew who the bad lady was. She was her no-good mama, Jilly, and she had come back to take her away.

Chapter 1

The wait was making Avery crazy. She sat in her little square cubicle, her back against the wall, one leg crossed over the other, drumming her fingertips against the desktop with one hand and holding an icepack against her wounded knee with the other. What was taking so long? Why hadn't Andrews called? She stared hard at the phone, willing it to ring. Nothing. Not a sound. Turning in her swivel chair, she checked the digital clock for the hundredth time. It was now 10:05, same as it was ten seconds ago. For Pete's sake, she should have heard something by now.

Mel Gibson stood up and leaned over the partition separating his workspace from Avery's and gave her a sympathetic look. That was his honest-to-goodness, real name, but Mel thought it was holding him back because no one in the law enforcement agency would ever take him seriously. Yet, he refused to have it legally changed to 'Brad Pitt,' as his supportive coworkers had suggested.

'Hi, Brad,' Avery said. She and the others were still trying out the new name to see if it fit. Last week it was 'George Clooney,' and that name got about the same reaction 'Brad' was getting now, a glare and a reminder that his name wasn't 'George,' it wasn't 'Brad,' and it wasn't 'Mel.' It was 'Melvin.'

'You probably should have heard by now,' he said.

She refused to let him rile her. Tall, geeky-looking, with an extremely prominent Adam's apple, Mel had the annoying habit of

using his third finger to push his thick wire-rimmed glasses back up on his ski nose. Margo, another coworker, told Avery that

Mel did it on purpose. It was his way of letting the other three know how superior he felt he was.

Avery disagreed. Mel wouldn't do anything improper. He lived by a code of ethics he believed personified the FBI. He was dedicated, responsible, hardworking, ambitious, and he dressed for the job he wanted… with one little glitch. Although he was only twenty-seven years old, his clothing resembled the attire agents wore back in the fifties. Black suits, white long-sleeved

shirts with button-down collars, skinny black ties, black wingtip shoes with a perfect shine, and a crew cut she knew he got trimmed once every two weeks.

For all of his strange habits-he could quote any line from The FBI Story, starring Jimmy Stewart-he had an incredibly sharp mind and was the ultimate team player. He just needed to lighten up a bit. That was all.

'I mean, don't you think you should have heard by now?' He sounded as worried as she felt.

'It's still early.' Then, less than five seconds later, she said, 'You're right. We should have heard by now.'

'No,' he corrected. 'I said that you should have heard. Lou and Margo and I didn't have anything to do with your decision to

call in the SWAT team.',

Oh, God, what had she been thinking? 'In other words, you don't want to take the flak if I'm wrong?'

'Not flak,' he said. 'The fall. I need this job. It's the closest I'm going to get to being an agent. With my eyesight…'

'I know, Mel.'

'Melvin,' he automatically corrected. 'And the benefits are great.'

Margo stood so she could join the conversation. 'The pay sucks, though.'

Mel shrugged. 'So does the work environment,' he said. 'But still… it's the FBI.'

'What's wrong with our work environment?' Lou asked as he too stood. His workstation was on Avery's left. Mel's was directly in front of hers, and Margo's cubicle was adjacent to Lou's. The pen-as they lovingly called their hellhole office space-was located behind the mechanical room with its noisy water heaters and compressors. 'I mean, really, what's wrong with it?' he asked again, sounding bewildered.

Lou was as clueless as ever, but also endearing, Avery thought. Whenever she looked at him, she was reminded of Pig-Pen in

the old Peanuts cartoon. Lou always looked disheveled. He was absolutely brilliant, yet he couldn't seem to find his mouth when he was eating, and his short-sleeved shirt usually had at least one stain. This morning there were two. One was jelly from the raspberry-filled doughnuts Margo had brought in. The big red spot was just above the black ink stain from the cartridge pen in

his white shirt pocket.

Lou tucked in his shirttail for the third time that morning and said, 'I like being down here. It's cozy.'

'We work in the corner of the basement without any windows,' Margo pointed out.

'So what?' Lou asked. 'Where we work doesn't make us any less important. We're all part of a team.'

'I'd like to be a part of the team that has windows,' Margo said.

'Can't have everything. Say, Avery, how's the knee?' he asked, suddenly changing subjects.

She gingerly lifted the icepack and surveyed the damage. 'The swelling's gone down.'

'How'd it happen?' Mel asked. He was the only one who hadn't heard the grisly details.

Margo ran her fingers through her short dark curls and said, 'An old lady nearly killed her.'

'With her Cadillac,' Lou said. 'It happened in her parking garage. The woman obviously didn't see her. There really ought to be

an age restriction on renewing a driver's license.'

'Did she hit you?' Mel asked.

'No,' Avery answered. 'I dove to get out of her way when she came roaring around the corner. I ended up flying across the

hood of a Mercedes and whacked my knee on the hood ornament. I recognized the Cadillac. It belongs to Mrs. Speigel, who

lives in my building. I think she's about ninety. She's not supposed to drive anymore, but every once in a while I'll see her taking the car out to do errands.'

'Did she stop?' Mel asked.

She shook her head. 'I don't think she had a clue I was there. She was accelerating so fast I was just glad there weren't any

other people in her way.'

'You're right, Lou,' Margo said. She disappeared behind her cubicle wall, bent down to push the box of copy paper into the

corner, and then stood on top of it. She was suddenly as tall as Mel. 'There should be an age limit on keeping a license. Avery

told us the woman was so little she couldn't see her head over the back of the seat. Just a puff of gray hair.'

'Our bodies shrink as we age,' Mel said. 'Just think, Margo. When you're ninety, no one will be able to see you.'