"She'll be there shortly," Hilda said, and when she'd disconnected, she gazed up at Mallory. "I want you to know-" she was back in her whispering mode "-I'm on your side, whatever happens."

Mallory tightened her lips and squared her shoulders, picked up her PalmPilot and tugged at the hemline of her neat black suit jacket. She took a step forward, then paused to extend each leg in front of her, twisting each foot to the left and then to the right, to assure herself that the polished gleam of her sensible black pumps had not picked up a speck of dust while she had so unwisely exiled herself to the Caribbean.

An early book of her mother's had advised, "Career success depends on keeping your work wardrobe in perfect condition-your suits clean, blouses pressed, shoes shined and protected by flannel shoe bags."

Her friends hooted at Ellen Trent's literary masterpieces-how-to bestsellers that taught both housewife and career woman to achieve domestic perfection with maximum efficiency. Mallory followed them to the letter. If she were ever a witness in a court case, she'd demand to swear on a stack of her mother's books.

Her mother would be proud of her now as she strode down the hall to the office of the legal department's head honcho, Bill Decker, with the confident carriage of a nobleperson. In this case, it appeared that the nobleperson might be on her way to the guillotine, but if her head rolled, her hair would be shining with good health and sporting a recent cut. She would die with her PalmPilot in her hand and her nails perfectly manicured.

From the way her colleagues were acting, she could only infer that she'd done something terribly, disastrously wrong. Something she couldn't even guess at. Maybe she was about to be fired. For a second, that stopped her in her tracks. Of all the things in the world Mallory had imagined could happen to her-being overworked, underpaid, taken for granted, used, ignored-being fired was at the bottom of the list.