All of this was new to me. I had never had to maintain a relationship with one woman while watching another woman I would most likely have to kill. I was used to keeping those two particular compartments of my life separate. I led a relatively normal social life in Wisconsin, including an occasional Nancy. But the life away from home was something else again. The business part of my life, I mean. The killing.

Of course I was in a different business now; slightly different, anyway. A new, self-created business that would require an intermixing, now and then, of the social me and the other one.

And I was finding out now, in my first time out, that playing both roles at once could prove to be a little disturbing.

Or anyway, irritating.

Though considering the boredom of this would-be paradise, a touch of irritation was maybe a good thing. At least I was awake. Aware, always, I was here on business. Perhaps I should’ve been thankful I hadn’t been seduced by the sex-and-sun, flesh-and-fun atmosphere of the place.

Only I was finding something else irritating. Or disturbing, anyway. I had developed a nagging fascination with the woman I was watching, that oriental-eyed woman with the big breasts, a woman who didn’t seem to quite fit in here, and that fascination was unhealthy as hell, especially since this was my first outing in my new (make that revised) line of work.

How much longer was I going to have to watch her? Another week? A month? Longer? I never have liked stakeout work, and this swinging singles lifestyle, with its fringe “benefit” of constant sex, seemed likely to kill me before I had a chance to kill anybody myself.

Maybe tonight would be different. After all, the afternoon had been different. The tall, busty woman I’d been watching these past few days had acted a little strange this afternoon. All week she’d been giddy, just another bubble-headed fun-seeker playing footsy and everything-elsey with her blond boyfriend. But this afternoon she’d gotten moody. Her face had taken on an almost grim look. Her efforts at having fun seemed just that: efforts. Efforts that had failed and lapsed into… what? Depression? No. More like seriousness. A serious mood, rather than a black or bitchy one.