Cally shrugged. She was a realist. As long as a collaborator didn’t actually get innocent people killed, he’d have to be into some pretty heavy-duty stuff to merit her professional attention. She didn’t think of operations like the one tonight as professional assignments. Sending her out to steal was a little like having an attorney take out the office trash. If your employer asked it, and cash flow was tight, and you could spare the time from your real job, you did it. But it wasn’t her real job. Cally O’Neal’s real job was killing people. And once she’d thought she wasn’t bothered by that at all. Now she knew she was, sometimes. And that it was better that way.

As she eeled her way between one overly large matron and a rather sticklike pruny one, Cally couldn’t help observing the effects of bad rejuv jobs from incomplete drug sets. Okay, so there are worse things than backaches and blouses that gap at the buttons.

“… and so my therapist said not to worry, Martin’s just entering a third childhood, and I said I’d had enough of this midlife crisis crap the first time and…”

There are definitely worse things. She snagged a glass from a tray carried by a balding, forty-something man in an ill-fitting tux. Including being stuck in a dead-end job like waiting on these bastards. She jumped as a hand groped her butt and glanced back to see a man who looked like a seventeen-year-old geek in a tuxedo disappearing into the crowd with his matronly wife on his arm. Case in point.

A slim socialite with the tight face characteristic of good old-fashioned plastic surgery caught her arm. Cally suppressed her reflexes, turning a blinding but polite smile on the woman.

“Gail? Is that you? Why the rumors said you weren’t due back for at least another two weeks. It looks fabulous.” The woman chattered at her, not pausing to wait for a response, “Where did you get the full set, you naughty girl, you. Oh, gawd, and the boobs look great! A bit over the top, perhaps, but you always were the drama queen, weren’t you.”