"So," he said, as they entered the third hour of moving boxes out of the alley apartment, "how do you know Amber?" She set down her box on the edge of a dumpster and stretched. "That shit in Istanbul, you know? You keep in touch after something like that."

"You're from Istanbul?" He put down his box. "Did you fly all this way just to help her move?"

She laughed and rolled her shoulders. "No, I travel all over the place. Just my bad luck I was in town the weekend she was moving." Her forehead creased, and she looked off to the side, thinking.

"Heh. Yeah," he said, "Bad luck, I guess. I'm a teacher, so I have lots of time in the summer. What sort of troubleshooting do you do?"

"The sort where it never pays to believe in luck," she said. She was turning slowly, looking at the corners of the buildings around her, at the windows near and above her. "Where's everyone else?"

"Dunno," he said. "Maybe they're taking a break too."

"At the same time?" she said. "Someone's trying to kill me. Get down." She pushed her box into the dumpster and pulled him down behind it with her.

"Are you crazy? Holy shit," he said as she pulled a gun.

"Stay behind me." She peeked out from behind the dumpster, then looked behind her. "Nothing." After a few minutes, she relaxed. "Maybe it was a false alarm."

"No," he said. "It wasn't."