Maggie, working behind the display case, put three big boxes on the counter, then started to ring up the order. Just then, the phone rang. Maggie turned to get it.

Nicole couldn’t say what it was that made her look up at that moment. A sixth sense? Luck? The way the teenager’s fidgeting caught her attention?

She saw the kid stick a cell phone back into his shorts’ front pocket, grab the boxes of doughnuts and head for the door. Without paying.

Nicole accepted that she was, by nature, a crabby person. She rarely saw the bright side of any situation and she was known to overreact from time to time. But nothing, absolutely nothing, pissed her off more than someone playing her for a fool. She’d had a lot of that in her life lately, and there was no way this kid was going to add himself to the list.

Without really planning her actions, she stuck out her cane, tripped him, then shoved the cane in the center of his back.

“I don’t think so,” she told him. “Maggie, call the cops.”

She half expected the kid to jump up and run away. She couldn’t have stopped him, but he didn’t move. Ten minutes later the door opened again, but instead of one of Seattle’s finest walking in, she looked up and saw someone who could easily pass for an underwear model/action hero.

The guy was tall, tanned and serious about working out. She could tell about the working-out bit because he wore red shorts and a gray T-shirt from Pacific High School ripped off just above his waistband. Muscles she hadn’t even known existed on the human body twisted and bunched as he moved.

Reflective sunglasses covered his eyes. He looked down at the kid still held in place with her cane, the doughnuts scattered across the floor, then whipped off the glasses and smiled at her.

She’d seen that smile before.

Oh, not from him specifically. It was the one Pierce Brosnan, playing James Bond, used to get information from slightly-out-of-breath secretaries. It was the one her ex-husband had used, more than once, to get out of trouble. Nicole couldn’t be more immune if she’d invented the vaccine herself.