Rain pounded the hood of her car and bounced off the asphalt as she turned off the Beemer. Her gaze slid to the front of the strip mall and sought the green-and-white Starbucks sign next to the golden glare of Blockbuster Video. Light from within the coffee shop poured out onto the wet sidewalk, while the raindrops slipping down Lucy’s window smeared vivid color and inky shadows like an abstract painting.

Next thing you know, some guy is wearing your head for a hat. Lucy turned off the car and shoved her keys in the pocket of her navy blue Ralph Lauren blazer. She hated when Maddie said things like that. When she made everyone else as paranoid and freaky as she was. Maddie interviewed psychopaths for a living, but that didn’t mean all men were child molesters, rapists, or serial killers. Lucy wrote about murder too, but she wrote fiction and was able to separate what she wrote from real life. Maddie seemed to have trouble with that.

Lucy grabbed her umbrella from the passenger seat and opened her car door. It wasn’t as if she was going to set up a second meeting with hardluvnman or was even going to leave Starbucks with him. It wasn’t even as if she was taking this coffee date any more seriously than she’d taken the others she’d had during the past few months.

She hit the button on her umbrella with her thumb, and the red canopy opened as she stepped from the car. Like the other “dates,” tonight was about work. She had her small notepad and pen in her pocket, right next to her little can of mace. She’d brought the pen and paper in case she needed to write down interesting tidbits about hardluvnman after he left. She’d brought the mace in case he wanted to wear her head for a hat.

Damn that Maddie.

Lucy paused briefly to shut the door behind her, then moved across the parking lot, dodging puddles on her way. Unless hardluvnman was different, she wouldn’t even use the pen and paper.