He wondered what she must have gone through since that day, how many weeks, months she'd lain in a hospital bed. He wondered what had possessed her to jump on that truck and try to wrestle control of it from Billy Golam.

Narcs. Cowboys, every last one of them.

Two years had passed. He wondered what she'd been doing all that time, and why she'd come out of the shadows for this case. He wondered why her life was crossing paths with his.

He sure as hell didn't want the trouble that came with her. But there it was. He'd taken the bait. He was on the case now.

It was all Estes' fault.

J ill ran out the front door of The Players, huffing and hiccuping, fat tears spilling down her cheeks with a dirty stream of black mascara. She swiped the back of her hand under her running nose, then scraped a stringy strand of hair back out of her eyes.

The valets stood off to the side, staring at her, saying nothing. They didn't ask if they could get her car, because they knew by looking at her, she wouldn't have a car worth letting them park. They parked cars for beautiful people, rich people, thin people.

"What are you looking at?" Jill snapped. They looked at each other, smirking. "Fuck you!" she shouted and ran, crying, across the parking lot, falling off one platform sandal and turning her ankle. Stumbling, she dropped the beaded handbag she'd stolen at Neiman Marcus, and the contents spewed out of it across the pavement.

"Goddammit!" Crawling on her hands and knees, she broke a fingernail as she scraped at a tube of lipstick and a pack of condoms. "Fuck! Fuck!"

Spittle and tears and snot ran from her face onto the concrete. Jill folded herself over into a ball and sobbed, a wrenching, ugly noise. She was ugly. Her clothes were ugly. Even her crying was ugly. Pain swelled inside her like a blister and burst with another wave of tears.

Why? She had asked the question a million times in her life. Why did she have to be the fat one, the ugly one; the one nobody liked, much less loved? It wasn't fair. Why was she supposed to have to work hard to change herself when bitches like Erin and Paris just had it all?

She wiped her face on the sleeve of the white lace blouse, gathered her stuff together, and struggled to her feet. An elegant older couple walking away from a Jaguar stared at her with something like horror. Jill gave them the finger. The woman gasped and the man put his arm around her protectively and hustled her toward the building.

Jill opened her car and flung her purse and the things that had come out of it in the direction of the passenger's seat. She flung herself behind the wheel, slammed the door, and burst into tears again. She pounded her fists on the wheel, then against the window, then hit the horn by accident and startled at the blast of sound.

Her big plan. Her big seduction. What a fucking joke she was.

She'd gone into Players, knowing Jade would be there, thinking he would invite her for a drink, and she could flirt with him and let him know how she'd helped him out with that cop. He was supposed to have been thankful and impressed with her quick thinking, and grateful for her loyalty. And they were supposed to have ended up at his place, where he would fuck her brains out. Phase one in her plan to get rid of Paris.

But everything had gone wrong, because she could never get a break. The whole stupid world was against her. Jade hadn't arrived yet when she got there, and the maître d' had wanted to throw her out. She could tell by the way he looked her up and down, like he thought she was some cheap hooker or something. He hadn't believed her when she told him she was meeting someone. And the waitress and the bartender had put their heads together and snickered at her as she sat at a table, waiting like an idiot drinking Diet Coke because they wouldn't go for her fake ID and serve her booze. Then that creep Van Zandt had showed up, half-drunk, and invited himself to sit with her.

What a jerk. All the mean, rotten things she'd heard him say about her, and he thought he could just suddenly pretend to be nice to her and charm his way into her pants. He'd never taken his eyes off her cleavage for the first fifteen minutes. And when she told him she was waiting for someone else, he had the nerve to be offended. Like she'd ever want to have sex with an old guy like him. So what he'd slipped her a couple of drinks? That didn't mean she owed him a blowjob, which was what he had wanted. If she was going to suck dick tonight, it wasn't going to be his.

And then Jade had finally walked in. And he'd looked at her with such disgust, she had wanted to shatter like a piece of glass. His angry words rang in her ears as if he'd screamed them at her, when in reality he'd asked her out into a quiet hall and had never raised his voice above a near whisper.

"What were you thinking, coming in here dressed like that?" he demanded. "You're my employee. The things you do in public reflect on me."

"But I was just-"

"I don't want the words street whore associated with my barn."

Jill had gasped as if he'd slapped her. That was when Michael Berne had come into the hall. She had seen him from the corner of her eye, pretending to make a phone call, watching them.

"I see clients here," Jade went on. "I conduct business here."

"I j-just w-wanted to see you," she'd said, her breath hitching in her throat as tears welled up. "I w-wanted to tell you about-"

"What's the matter with you? Thinking you can come here and interrupt my evening?"

"B-but I have t-to tell you- I know about Stellar-"

"If you need to speak with me about something, we'll do it at the barn during business hours."

"B-but-"

"Is everything all right here?" Michael Berne asked, butting in like it was any of his business, the skinny freckled dork.

"This doesn't concern you, Michael," Jade said.

"The young lady seems upset." But when he looked at her, Jill had known he didn't care whether or not she was upset. He had looked at her the same way every other man had looked at her tonight-like she was selling it and she ought to be cutting her prices.

She had glared up at him through a wavy sheen of tears and said, "Butt out! We don't need you around here or anywhere else!"

Berne had moved away. "You ought to take your personal business somewhere private, Jade," he said like a prissy fruit. "This is really unprofessional."

Jade had waited until Berne was out of sight, then turned on her again, angrier than before. "Get out of here. Get out of here before you embarrass me any more than you already have. We'll talk about this tomorrow, first thing in the morning. If I can stand the sight of you."

He might as well have cut her with a knife. The pain had gone as deep inside her as if he had.

Fuck him, Jill thought now. Don Jade was her boss, not her father. He couldn't tell her how to dress or where she could and couldn't go. He couldn't call her a whore and get away with it.

All the hard work she did for Don Jade, and this was the way he treated her. She would have been his partner-in bed and out. She would have been loyal to him. She would have done anything for him. But he didn't deserve her or her loyalty and devotion. He deserved to have people betray him and stab him in the back. He deserved whatever happened to him.

An idea slowly began to take shape in Jill's mind as she sat there in her car. She didn't have to put up with being treated like dirt. She didn't have to stand for being called names. She could get a job with any stable she wanted. Fuck Don Jade.

She drove out of the parking lot and took a left on South Shore, heading for the equestrian center, paying no attention to the car that pulled out behind her.