“Don’t scream!” he whispered, as he muffled her terrified moan with his palm. “Understand?”

She nodded, eyes wide open in fear.

“Where’s Gigi? Why isn’t she with you?”

He released his grip long enough to let her gasp in an almost inaudible voice, “She’s at the baby-sitter’s. She’s keeping her longer today, so I can shop. Jimmy, what are you doing here?”

“How much money have you got?”

“Here, take my pocketbook.” Cally held it out to him, praying that he would not think to look through her coat pockets. Oh God, she thought, make him go away.

He took the purse and in a low and menacing tone warned, “Cally, I’m going to let go of you. Don’t try anything or Gigi won’t have a mommy waiting for her. Understand that?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Cally waited until he released his grip on her, then slowly turned to face him. She hadn’t seen her brother since that terrible night nearly three years ago when, with Gigi in her arms, she had come home from her job at the day-care center to find him waiting in her apartment in the West Village.

He looks about the same, she thought, except that his hair is shorter and his face is thinner. In his eyes there wasn’t even a trace of the occasional warmth that at one time made her hope there was a possibility he might someday straighten out. No more. There was nothing left of the frightened six-year-old who had clung to her when their mother dumped them with Grandma and disappeared from their lives.

He opened her purse, rummaged through it, and pulled out her bright green combination change purse and billfold. “Eighteen dollars,” he said angrily after a quick count of her money. “Is that all?”

“Jimmy, I get paid the day after tomorrow,” Cally pleaded. “Please just take it and get out of here. Please leave me alone.”

There’s half a tank of gas in the car, Jimmy thought. There’s money here for another half tank and the tolls. I might just be able to make Canada. He’d have to shut Cally up, of course, which should be easy enough. He would just warn her that if she put the cops onto him and he got caught, he’d swear that she got someone to smuggle the gun in to him that he’d used on the guard.