She was. Bolan had to believe that the reaction was genuine. Her eyes fluttered, the veneer of sophistication cracked a bit further, and she exclaimed, "Oh wow! That's what you meant by 'out of the frying pan and into the fire.' "

Bolan assured her, "That's exactly what I meant."

"So what do I do now?" she asked in a small voice. "Go back?"

He shook his head. "It's too late for that. The cops are already swarming the joint. No, you have to go on. But we have to build you a story. You panicked and ran, a guy picked you up and took you into town. You..." The look in her eyes stopped him. He asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's no good," she replied miserably. "They saw me. Two men. I saw them watching me from the kitchen window as I was running. They had to know where I was headed."

Bolan said, "Well damn it."

"I guess you could take me to a police station," she suggested in a frightened voice. "I could ask for protection."

He shook his head. "That wouldn't buy you a thing. Not if these people decide to get to you."

"Then take me home," she said, suddenly flaring with defiance. "I live in Elmhurst. I'll call the club and tell them what happened, and I'll just go on as though nothing had happened. If the mobsters come to me, I'll just tell them exactly how it was. And they can like it or lump it."

Bolan was obviously neither liking nor lumping it. His face was etched with trouble lines, and again he said, "Well damn it."

Perhaps he was remembering the gruesome remains of what had been an equally beautiful and innocent girl, left behind in a New York morgue; or maybe he was thinking of an exotic French actress who had offered him Eden on the Riviera and who had found in return nothing but an echo of Bolan's hell — or a valiant little Cuban exile who had given her blood for his in Miami and died in agony with a blowtorch at her breasts. And perhaps he was viewing the entire procession of beloved dead.