Steph became head of the bomb removal team, a small distinction since she was the only member. She was 26, and the heiress to the knowledge Archie had spent twenty-eight years learning. Within the San Francisco Police Dept., she was regarded as an outcast, almost a pariah. No one was interested in her job, and joining her would have been recognized as a punishment; it was a departmental backwater, far off the path of career advancement. Steph was regarded as a madwoman, for it was known by now that she talked to her cat and her car. She was also a stunning beauty, with a slender powerful body, ice blue eyes, and raven hair that showed reddish highlights. Her tall, slim figure hid a steely strength. For over five years, Stephanie had advanced in her study of Ying Jow Pai, (Eagle Claw Art), achieving a rank of Minh Kup, (5^th grade), and soon she would test for the equivalent of a first-degree black belt. She could squeeze a full can of beer hard enough to blow the pop-top open.

Stephanie continued to rely on the love of Barney and Brittanie, and she loved her little family with all her heart. The loss of her friend, Archie, had left her even more withdrawn from human company than ever before. If anything, she had come to be fatalistic about close relationships with people. They led to pain and disappointment. It was predictable, and the norm was illustrated by her disenfranchisement by the rest of the police force. Steph was willing to forego the possibility of finding love beyond what she had, for she'd learned that such attempts ended in pain and loss. When she saw loving couples, she told herself that such a relationship would forever be beyond her reach. Her happiness would never come from the love of another person. Already isolated by her years in the deserts, she was now in real danger of retreating to the safety of her oasis, and never again venturing across the hostile sands in hope of reaching anything better. Instead, she worked.

In March of 2000, Steph's little family celebrated Barney the Cat's 14^th birthday. Down in her subconscious, Steph must have been noticing that he hadn't been moving quite as quickly in the mornings, hadn't been quite as aggressive with the rats, and hadn't been eating quite as much as when they'd met. The changes were almost unnoticeable because they happened so slowly, and consciously, she didn't really recognize them for what they were. There was just a tickling sense of foreboding below the threshold of her awareness that left her unsettled. In truth, she'd been more worried about some rust spots that had appeared on Brittanie's rocker panels. Brit had spent decades in the dry heat of Texas, and the damp salty air of San Francisco was slowly eating away at her sheet metal. The clock was ticking. Steph was aging too; in June, she would turn 29.

Somewhere along the way, bomb disposal had gained a kind of glamour. Maybe it was the movies or TV action shows. Maybe it was that the young were searching for ever more extreme tests of their self-worth. Steph had taken over in 1997, after Archie's death. In the two years they'd worked together, no one had even tried to join them. In 1998 she'd had two potential members apply to the bomb disposal team. One panicked and the other passed. In 1999, four people tried to join. Three passed the test when confronted by the mad woman with the bomb on her desk, who sat and talked to her cat as the timer counted off the 100 seconds. In the first half of 2000, three applied and one passed. By her 29^th birthday, Stephanie had a team of five working for her. She drilled and tested them unmercifully, instructing them in every trick she'd learned. She had never understood that Archie Shimamoto, her mentor, had been the recognized dean of his profession, or that her own record was exemplary. Steph figured that it was simple; if you fucked up in her line of work, you died.

A week after her birthday, Stephanie was jerked awake by her pager. The dispatcher told her that a bomb had exploded in a shopping center in Oakland, and the mayor's office had received a demand for sixteen million dollars before 10:00 am, when a second mall would explode. They had only determined which shopping center was endangered in the last few minutes. Within a quarter-hour, Steph was heading for the Golden Gate Bridge, her strobes and siren clearing the way. Police had closed the bridge to traffic. Brittanie's aging hemi engine pushed them to 110 mph, weaving past other emergency vehicles. Her team was converging on a second shopping center, the evacuation already in progress. It was already 9:20 am.

When she arrived at Piedmont and MacArthur, the search team had already completed their sweep. Three known devices had been found in widely separated locations, probably timed to detonate simultaneously. The loss of life could have been staggering. The property damage would be in the tens of millions of dollars. The first device had been a warning, going off at 7:00 a.m. in the nearly empty International Marketplace just off Embarcadero. The demand for money hadn't been sent until 8:30 a.m., shortening the response time and insuring that a full crowd was endangered. It was now known that the second threat was unquestionably for real.

At 9:30 a.m., the evacuation was complete, and Steph mobilized her team. She sent in two of her people to each of the bomb sites, while she took the third site alone. The sixth team member, the least experienced, waited outside in their specially equipped truck, ready to respond to their call to extract the devices from the premises. The team members donned their work clothes; hazardous materials suits, layered with puncture resistant Kevlar and fire resistant Nomex. They immediately started sweating. Stephanie shouldered her equipment bag and stepped onto her scooter. She'd instituted the use of children's scooters to hasten their response time when indoors, figuring that skateboards were unnecessarily hazardous. Though Capt. Martinez had shaken her head in disbelief, the tactic had proven itself valuable, saving transport time in offices and parks alike.

Stephanie approached the front of the Sears department store and leapt off her scooter, jogging inside, and heading for the entrance to the sporting goods stockroom where the search team had found a device. She spotted the red flag marking the device with little difficulty, and quickly saw the device itself; a locked tool chest, marked by a red beanbag the search team had left lying next to it. The box was big, and Steph knew that bombs were made as small as possible, the better to be transported and set in place undetected. A hand grenade was a perfect example. The toolbox was close to the size of a small microwave oven. There was no point in attempting containment before working. Steph carried nothing that would significantly increase her odds of survival if she fucked up with a charge as large as what she expected she was looking at.

Steph set up a video camera to record her progress. Next, she attached a microphone to the toolbox with a suction cup, and started a tape recorder. After adjusting her headphones, she pulled on a Kevlar/Nomex hood with a polycarbonate/acrylic visor that matched the silvery hazardous materials suit she wore. She could hear the faint ticking of an electronic timer, probably made from a battery operated clock; a cheap piece of work, she thought.

The toolbox sported a combination padlock, and Steph attached her microphone to it, preparing to pick the lock. A padlock as cheap as the one she saw was there for a reason, and it wasn't expected to stop anyone. It was only present to distract them into lowering their guard. Before she started, Stephanie spoke softly into her headset, communicating with the two other teams.

Across the empty mall, two teams responded affirmative. A mercury switch would complete an electrical circuit and detonate the charge if the liquid metal inside its glass capsule moved enough to submerge a pair of contacts. It could happen if the toolboxes were lifted, rocked, or when the lid tilted as it opened. The circuit could have been activated by a time delay, allowing the bomber to close and lock the lid.

Once the padlocks were removed, Stephanie's people would edge the lid up 1/8" and insert an endoscopic camera with a fiber optic light source, to check for the booby trap that Steph suspected. This was an unavoidable hazard, and the most dangerous part of the job. Depending on what they found, they'd improvise a solution. At least a mercury switch was distinctive, with an easily recognized appearance. It would be a simple thing to spot. Steph really, really wanted to light up a Camel.

Steph had set to work, listening as the plates inside the padlock spun and finally lined up, allowing the lock to open. She removed the padlock from the hasp and carefully raised the lid, wedging a special rubber shim into the opening. She took the endoscopic camera and inserted it into the toolbox, the built in diode lighting the interior. Steph watched a 5" monitor as she moved the camera, examining the inside compartment. She saw the charge, about 25 pounds of plasticized high yield explosive. She saw the timer; a clock, battery pack, wire bundle, and the detonator cap. She saw the wires running to the alternate circuit for the booby trap. Following the wires, Stephanie tilted the camera up and saw the mercury switch, pop-riveted directly below the handle in the center of the lid. The liquid metal was 1/4" from completing the circuit.

Stephanie slipped a rubber wedge into the gap, raising the lid until the mercury was barely 1/16" from contacting the second electrode, and gaining precious added workspace. The opening between the lid and the body of the toolbox was now about 3/8". Into the gap she slid a special pair of titanium forceps. The ceramic-coated tips had a cutting edge like a toenail clipper, the fulcrum held a force multiplying gearset. Non-conductive and razor sharp, the forceps could cut up to a 8 gauge solid core wire, or a 1/8" steel braid cable. Stephanie carefully placed the tips around the wires to the mercury switch and applied force. The cut wires fell away, disabling the booby trap. She extracted the forceps and lifted the lid open wide. There were no surprises; the camera had shown her the full picture.

As she had on her first day in Archie's office, Steph examined the bomb. Sure enough, whoever had created it had exhausted their ingenuity on the booby trap. The detonation circuit was simple; no feedback loop, no interrupt sensor, no hidden button cell. A 9-volt battery powered everything. Steph lifted the battery pack and removed the battery. The clock stopped. It was 9:49 a.m. 11 minutes remained, and to Stephanie, it was a huge margin of safety.

"Prepare to retrieve the device," Steph announced into her headset, "Sears sporting goods stockroom. I need a wheel dolly. The device is deactivated."

Within four minutes, her words were repeated by her other two teams, the last at 9:53 am. Stephanie had pulled the blastproof Nomex hood off her head, relishing the rush of the air conditioning that cooled the sweat from her skin and hair. She gazed directly at the video camera and happily announced, "That's all folks!" She lit a Camel.

Somehow, the press got a hold of her videotape. It showed a beautiful woman, sweating in a Kevlar/Nomex HAZMAT suit, deactivating a bomb and saving the public with only minutes to spare. It was way too good a visual for the media to pass up. By 5:10 p.m., Stephanie Walker was a hero. By 5:30 p.m., a contract had been placed on her life.

When the news aired, Steph was the lead story, and Barney the Cat demanded that she sit and view SF Bay Watch, the TV news show, for the 10:00 p.m. repeat. Stephanie was horrified. She'd wondered what the vans with the big antennae were doing outside the garage, but she'd been reading and napping, and hadn't even ventured outside. Now, Steph could see a crowd of reporters, cameramen, and gawkers on the sidewalk in the dark, overflowing into the street. What would her neighbors think, Steph wondered, especially the quiet Chinese and the reclusive Mr. Mussolini, the aging son of a deposed Italian politician? In any case, she knew she could never leave her apartment again.

Around 11:00 p.m., the tong came to the rescue of their old friend. First, a street sweeper barreled down the curb, scattering the crowd and tearing up the wires the reporters had strung across the pavement. As the media types scurried to recover, an aging step van lurched in front of the garage and the rear doors opened, falling off their rusted hinges. Thousands of rats poured out into the shrieking crowd. Steph watched the action in amazement, while Barney the Cat sat, mesmerized and conflicted by the hordes of vermin. It gave him the creeps and stirred his killer instincts at the same time. Brittanie sat in the living room garage bay, rocking in hysterics on her springs. She alone knew what had been arranged, having personally made the phone calls. The tong finally set up ultrasonic pest repellers, driving the rats east, into the financial district. By 12:30 a.m., the neighborhood was quiet and back to normal.

They were resourceful people who had adapted to their strange new country, though it was so different from their home across the sea, and they took care of their own. Unfortunately, no one had noticed the two men in their silver Cadillac, who had watched the entire affair, and whose interest in Steph's apartment had nothing to do with getting a story. For the next two weeks they watched Stephanie's comings and goings, building up a schedule of her activities. They could have completed their research in a couple days, but she was highly unpredictable, and they didn't know how much to believe the stories they'd heard about her. In the end, they could have spent two years and still not predicted Steph's movements accurately. One thing they were sure of though, was that the gasoline pump in the front yard would come in handy.

In many ways, it was a day like any other. At 7:00 a.m. Stephanie smacked the alarm clock and Barney the Cat batted it onto the floor. Steph grudgingly rose and went into the dining room and spent a half-hour warming up and running through a couple of Eagle Claw forms; Lin Kuen, (the Connected Fist), and Fuk Fu Kuen, (Controlling the Tiger). She held the equivalent of a second-degree black belt now, and helped her Sifu as a part time instructor. Afterwards, she showered, donned her black BDUs, and headed out the door to work. It was only a twelve-minute walk to the Spec Ops compound at Central, and she often walked rather than drove. By 8:15 a.m., Steph was in her office making coffee.

Back at the apartment, Brittanie was chatting on the car phone and Barney the Cat was stretching on the couch. Neither noticed the pair of men in suits who crossed the sidewalk and tampered with the gasoline pump in the front yard. Neither noticed the box they left on the gas meter, attached with magnets, or the wires leading from it to a small backpack wrapped in duct tape.

At 11:30 a.m., Steph and two of her colleagues went to the Hing Lung Pan Asian Restaurant, on Broadway, for lunch. Usually she walked home and ate with her family. Barney the Cat was probably returning from his morning rounds of rousting rats, and Brittanie the Desoto would have been glued to the TV, watching the Discovery Channel. Mr. Mussolini recalled that he saw Barney at the dining room window around 11:45 a.m., when he was returning from the self-service hand laundry, and the TV was turned up loud enough to be heard on the sidewalk. Everything seemed normal.

At noon, Steph and her team members were just digging into their curried lo mien lunch specials, when they heard the blast. It was powerful enough to rattle their empty soup bowls from a dozen blocks away. Steph's heart skipped a beat, and she was stricken with a certainty of disaster. She felt as if she'd been shot. On the basis of her instincts, she threw down a twenty and dashed out the door, headed for home. Her teammates followed, but neither of them came close to catching up with her.

All the way, Stephanie had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she ran. It got worse when she was three blocks from home and her pager went off. She ignored it. She could already hear sirens and see smoke billowing into the air up ahead. She knew, just knew that something horrible had happened at home, and tears were already pouring down her cheeks as she rounded the corner onto her street. There was a crowd gathering up and down the block, and the buildings opposite her garage were lit with flickering yellow and orange, by a conflagration far beyond anything the aging structures could have created alone. Accelerants…Steph knew there had to be accelerants present for the fire to burn so fierce and so fast.

She didn't even have to reach the garage to know it was fully involved. There was a flaming pit that encompassed what had been her front yard, the front of the garage, and the sidewalk too. A powerful lateral jet of fire was rolling out of a pipe where the gas meter had been. The gasoline pump was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't get within 35 yards, not within four doors of her home for the heat, and thick black smoke was roiling up into the sky. In her heart of hearts, she could almost hear the terror of her family; Barney and Brittanie, helplessly burning to death in the ruins, though she knew they must have died almost instantly. She saw that the roof had already collapsed. Stephanie's legs couldn't hold her up and she sank, first to her knees, then crumpling down flat, until she lay sobbing in the street. Brave, loyal Barney and sweet, loving Brittanie; the only ones she'd ever loved who had stuck with her. Her beloved family was gone, and she was more alone than she'd ever been. She was back in the desert and her oasis had dried up.

The garage had mostly burned to the ground before the fire department even arrived. The firemen worked mostly to contain the blaze and stop it from spreading. It was almost 7:00 p.m. before they left, and there was nothing for Steph to do, nothing to salvage, absolutely nothing. Stephanie found parts of Brittanie's frame rails in the wreckage, melted and twisted almost beyond recognition. Nothing was ever found of Barney.

Stephanie took a leave of absence from the department. Mostly, she wished that she'd been home for lunch that day, and died with her beloved friends. She went to the cliffs where Archie's railroad coaches had once sat, remembering the nights they'd all spent together. She'd been surprised that he'd left her the land in his will. The surf and the rocks far below had never looked more inviting. But Steph didn't jump, and she didn't pull the trigger of the handgun that she'd held against her temple one night as she cried and drank. She didn't purposely botch a job and blow herself up. Somehow, Steph survived.

Eventually, Stephanie took to walking the used car lots. For weeks she searched, hoping to hear the whisper of a voice among the vehicles parked side by side in endless rows. She was desperate to find a new confidant, but the hulks remained silent. Steph probably walked past every used car for sale in the city of San Francisco, but in the end, she could only accept that Brittanie the Desoto had been one of a kind. She had been the gift of providence, a wise and loving companion for a lonely soul; Brit had been the best friend or older sister that Stephanie had never had. Finally, with a heavy heart, she gave up and leased a BMW. Steph never even considered the dealership showrooms or the idea of buying a new car.

The idea of replacing Barney the Cat was ludicrous to Steph. She never even tried to find another like him. In Barney, she had stumbled on a friend who reflected the hand of the divine. Of all the animals Stephanie had ever met, not a one had communicated with her in any supernatural fashion. Even Mattie the Pig had been mute to her. Housecats, bred through thousands of generations to domesticity, were a pale shadow of their wild bobcat cousins. Though they impressed many people with a sense of self-awareness and apparent empathy, they worked mainly on instinct, and an almost cynical ability to manipulate humans for their own comfort. Barney had embraced his wildness and killer instincts, and yet, having been raised in a loving human home, he had attained a civility and clarity about the world that exceeded what most humans could claim. He was without their pretensions, but endowed with their intelligence.

The land that Archie Shimamoto had passed on to Steph in his will was prime real estate. Had it not been in Archie's family since the first decade of the 20^th century, it would have been either part of Stinson State Beach or the Golden Gate Rec Area. Archie's father had fought in court for three years to reclaim it, after the family had returned from Manzanar in 1946. The land encompassed ten acres, situated in a picturesque locale, on the cliffs south of Sausalito, overlooking San Francisco Bay. On foggy nights, it seemed that a ghostly carpet stretched from the yard, out to Oakland and Berkeley, with only the towers of the Golden Gate piercing the slowly rolling vapors in between. On sunny days, Alcatraz and Angel Islands lay like miniatures in a perfect model landscape, unreal and gemlike, purified by the distance as they floated in the blue-green water below. East Rd. ran behind the property to the west, while to the east, Steph could watch the ferry lines threading their lanes, crisscrossing the bay. In late September of 2000, Steph hired an architect and began to build a new home.

There had been two more attempts on her life in the weeks after her garage apartment blew up and burned. Someone shot at her from a rooftop, as she walked a used car lot in Richmond, on a gusty afternoon. The slug slammed into the hood of a Buick right next to her, just as she'd passed out of sight behind the building. Steph never even noticed; she was lurching drunk and still half-dazed by her loss. A week later, someone in a blue Ford van tried to run her down on a street in Daly City. Steph saw the van coming at her and slipped aside. She'd been in no mood for the shit. As it passed a hair's breadth away, she'd flung a longneck bottle through the driver's side window and pulled her autopistol, dropping into a Weaver stance and discharging two rounds. The driver had almost lost control, scrubbing a guardrail for ten yards. He'd actually accelerated away from her and never stopped. Steph didn't give it a second thought. The incident was indicative of a newfound coldness in Steph. She had no one to love, and no one loved her. There was no outlet for the natural warmth in her heart, and her looses had made her grim.

In all the years she'd been in San Francisco, Stephanie had never taken a real vacation. Now, without a home or any family ties, she took part of her accumulated vacation time and went to Hong Kong. Every five years, the home chapter of the tong in Steph's old neighborhood sponsored a kumite, a full contact martial arts tournament. Steph entered it, representing her art, her kwoon, and her Sifu.

She fought six contests, and the Chinese had never seen any woman fight with her rage or inspiration. It seemed to them as though a demon had come from the west, heartless, merciless, and thirsting for blood. Using techniques drawn from the Lin Kuen and Fuk Fu Kuen forms, Steph defeated every woman she faced, intimidating them, forcing errors, paralyzing nerves, and finally dislocating joints. When she faced the male champion for the overall title, she didn't win, but she didn't lose either. They fought to a draw, neither able to continue. After five long minutes, Steph had suffered a broken right leg. She had a minor concussion and three broken ribs. Her opponent would never speak again, and it would be a year before the joint damage she'd inflicted would allow him to walk. She'd employed techniques from Jui Lao Tong, (the drunken eagle form), to crush nerves and bone. Stephanie came home as the joint overall champion, a first for a woman, and only the second time a westerner had won.

Steph returned to work after a month's absence, still with a cast on her leg. She continued drilling and teaching her team, and when the cast came off three weeks later, she resumed deactivating bombs.

In Sausalito, Steph's new house was under construction, rising fast above a poured concrete pedestal that housed a windowless three-car garage. Above that sat a reinforced concrete bunker, sheathed in weathered cedar and encircled by a redwood deck whose eastern side was cantilevered out over the cliff face. Floor to ceiling windows graced each wall, but they were ½" Herculite, the same bulletproof material used in the cockpits of older USAF fighters. Satellite dishes and solar panels adorned the roof, and a sub-basement housed a room filled with batteries and a generator. The fuel oil tank was stainless steel wrapped in graphite fiber, and it was buried deep in reinforced concrete, 25 yards from the house. There was no gas hookup or meter. Steph had paid for the inclusion of several alarm systems, and after the contractors were done, she would personally install some illegal countermeasures of her own. She spent most of the money she'd saved since her tour in the U.S. Army, but never again would someone threaten her home. In the meantime, Steph lived anonymously in a trailer, her bunk bed hiding a growing cache of military munitions and firearms. It was mid-December, 2000.

Stephanie was celebrating a dismal Christmas 2000, alone in her trailer. She spent much of the day drinking and cleaning her weapons, loading magazines, checking detonators and charges. Finally, at about 5:00 p.m., when others were enjoying the aromas of Christmas dinners nearly ready in their ovens, Steph grabbed the keys to her BMW and went for a drive. The trailer had progressed from cozy to claustrophobic, and she was saturated with loneliness and discontent.

She intended to drive south on SR-101, to the Fish and Game Reserve, where she could lose herself wandering in the marsh, drinking, smoking Camels, and screaming unheard. Eventually, she'd cross the bay on SR-84 and head back north, making a large circle through Freemont and San Lorenzo, on I-880, blatantly abusing the speed limit. Steph figured that sometime around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., she'd navigate the BMW back across the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco. Maybe she'd drive past the burned out garage, maybe not.

Around 5:30 p.m., Stephanie passed the airport and turned off the highway onto Marsh Rd. She followed it to the dead end, where she parked. The oily channel leading to the bay was less than 100 yards ahead and she could smell the stale petrol and rotting vegetation. She got out, with her handgun, a full longneck, and her pack of Camels, and walked, her hiking boots squishing in the soggy soil as she headed down to the water. It was mostly quiet, with a breeze whistling through the marsh grass and worn out tires, that muffled the traffic noise from SR-84 nearby. An occasional jetliner passed overhead.

Steph found a discarded refrigerator, half buried in the muck, and she took a seat, lighting a Camel and gazing across the water. Distant lights winked in Jarvis Landing and Newark, while the Coyote Hills Park formed a dark mass on a hillside. It was a melancholy scene, and it suited her mood. To her right, the lights of cars moved across the SR-84 bridge…a bridge without a name, Stephanie thought sadly. That bridge had been around for decades and it obviously knew the score.

Steph believed things like that should have names. People named their pets and boats. They named their children. She'd named her car and they'd thought she was crazy because she talked to it. Her cat, too. Yet they'd never figured out how she'd solved so many crimes on her beat all those years ago. They'd never identified her informants or learned where her information had come from. They would never have believed that Brittanie the Desoto had learned more, talking to the vehicles on the streets, than a dozen detectives could have learned by questioning the neighbors. They would never have believed that Barney the Cat had found the locations of counterband, stolen goods, hideouts, and hidden weapons. He'd prowled the dark alleys and rooftops, spying out the haunts and doings of nocturnal criminals; listening and reporting on their plots with a glee that bordered on mania. It had been a variation on his natural hunting instinct, a part of his catness.

Stephanie sat in the speckled dark of that holy night, draining her Bud and thinking how much happier she'd have been to still be a patrol officer walking her beat. The esteem of her neighbors and the warmth of her home and family had made her life sweet. Steph cared nothing for being a hero. She sat drunkenly remembering her beloved family, tears trickling down her face, the handgun pressed against her temple. A hundred yards behind her, the men who had followed her from the trailer blew up her BMW. Amazingly, she didn't shoot herself in the head by reflex.

The blast and the gout of flame shooting into the sky made her snap. She would later recall that what followed felt unreal, almost dreamlike. Steph leapt from her seat and flew back down the trail in the dark, slipping in the mud and tripping on partially buried refuse. When she saw the silver Cadillac starting up, she opened fire, still running toward it as fast as she could. Thirteen rounds from the 9mm Glock slammed into the hood, grille, and windshield, and the car stopped. Steph dropped the spent magazine, slammed a fresh one in, and kept coming. When she reached the Caddy, she ripped open the driver's door and emptied the second magazine into the two occupants. As the sounds of the gunfire died away in the marsh, Steph stood drunkenly gasping, trying to catch her breath.

"That'll teach 'em," the nameless bridge's whisper tickled her ears on the breeze.

Stephanie managed to drive the Cadillac, with its grisly occupants, into the channel, where it mostly sank beneath the oily wash. It had been hissing, and the smell of antifreeze steam clung to her clothing. On the way back, she briefly regarded the burned out wreck of her leased BMW, before starting to walk back down Marsh Rd. to SR-101. It would be a long walk home, several hours at least, she figured, but it would give her time to think.

When she got back to SR-101, Stephanie stuck out her thumb as she had on that June afternoon in Bakersfield, eleven years ago. She presented herself to the Christmas traffic as a drunken woman, her legs covered in mud, carrying a handgun and a pack of Camels…even in California, it was almost an hour before anyone stopped.

"Thanks for the ride," Steph said as she slid into the idling car. She set the Glock in her lap and pulled the door shut. The car was so small that the roof had barely reached her waist. It was a bright red, with a black roof, and a diminutive tire at each corner.

"'Sup, wahine? Frisco go?" The woman driving weighed at least three hundred pounds, and the steering wheel was jammed into where her lap would have been. She looked very happy to meet Steph; just happy in general it seemed, to be out driving on Christmas night. "Mele kalikimaka!"

"Uh, okay," Steph agreed, not really sure what had been said. To make conversation, she asked, "Where ya from?"

"Lihue, Kauai," she told Stephanie as she squinted out the windshield into the dark.

"Turn on your headlights," Steph instructed nervously, as the car wove across the centerline toward an approaching truck. The hulking carcass of a large dead animal lay in their lane, flashing by in the darkness outside Steph's window.

"It's in Hawaii," the woman elaborated with a fluttering gesture, momentarily taking her hands off the wheel. The engine tone rose as the car accelerated, swerving back into their own lane, then the headlights came on. Steph could have sworn the woman hadn't touched any of the knobs on the dash.

"Oh, okay," Steph said, finally understanding now. The woman was a Hawaiian, maybe even a kumu hula. "Yeah, I'm going to San Francisco. My car just exploded."

"Whatta shame," the woman said sympathetically, toning down her island pidgin, "needing wheels now, wahine?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Steph realized for the first time. The little red car dodged around a pothole, though the woman was obliviously steering straight ahead. Stephanie raised an eyebrow. "What kind of a car is this?"

"Mini Cooper."

At 9:05 a.m. on December 26^th, 2000, Stephanie Walker pulled her replacement BMW into the parking lot of Great Britain Import Motorcars, at Howard St. and Van Ness. She had dressed in a Navy blazer and slacks, with a pale blue silk blouse that matched her eyes. Steph hadn't started drinking yet that morning, so she carried a Nissan Stainless Road Carafe filled with Vanilla Hazelnut Hi-Test. The salesman saw her coming, noted the BMW and the suit, figured executive, and began calculating his percentage on a Jaguar. He nearly regurgitated his Eggs Benedict and Double Sputum Latte when she asked about the Mini Coopers. He was stuttering, and she looked past him into the showroom. There they sat, on the far side of the Land Rover; three Mini Coopers, small and gemlike, shining in the tungsten spotlights, red, yellow, and British racing green. Stephanie walked towards them as if entranced, leaving the salesman behind. In truth, he was glad to see her go. The Minis tended to sell themselves to those with an affinity for them, and all he had to do was wait to fill out the paperwork.

Steph circled the cars, noticing immediately that the yellow one seemed to tilt slightly on its tires to watch her. The red and green seemed a bit colder to her; not unfriendly, but simply more reserved. Finally, she stood in front of yellow, looking closely at the front end and grille. The little car seemed to be looking up at her with its headlights, the grille seeming to smile. Stephanie liked it already. She moved to the driver's side and opened the door, relishing the scent of new upholstery and fresh paint. Though limited on interior space, it felt inviting, sorta cozy, and the seat looked comfy to Steph. She ducked down through the door and sat, stretching her legs and settling them on the pedals. She grasped the wheel, tried the placement of the shifter, stared at the gauges. She turned on the radio.

It was amazing. The little car had six-speaker surround sound and a CD player rested beneath the tuner. It played her a jaunty show tune from a Broadway musical that Steph couldn't remember the name of…maybe it was the one named for a western state, she absently thought. Stephanie pulled the door closed to see how much of the outside noise disappeared, and again she was surprised. She could hear nothing of the outside world at all.

"Wow, it sounds really nice in here," Steph remarked to herself, "I'm impressed."

"Thank ye, luv," a lilting, youngish voice whispered to her around the words of the music, "always so nice to be appreciated, it is." The car's pleasant accent was musical.

A smile spread across Steph's face. "I'm Stephanie," she offered, "Stephanie Walker. What's your name, dear?"

"Oh, beg yer pardon, miss. Forgive my boldness for this self-introduction," the yellow car replied somewhat formally, "Lizzie Cooper here, and a pleasure it is, Ms. Walker."

"The pleasure's all mine, Lizzie," Steph answered, and it was true. "I'm kinda informal, mostly, and I want to be your friend."

"I'd be likin that, Stephanie," Lizzie said, and Steph could hear the smile in her words, "I'd so love to feel the open road, the sun and the breeze, even the rain, just motoring through the countryside, don't ya know?"

"Absolutely," Steph agreed, "just let me talk to that salesman, and we'll be on our way."

"That would be Nigel, it would," Lizzie offered with just a touch of pique, "nice enough chap, if a bit superficial. Spends most of his time brown nosing the Jaguar roadster."

"All done, hon," Steph happily told the little car as they drove off the lot, "how do you like the little present I got from Nigel for you?"

"Oh Stephanie, you know how every girl loves new shoes. Thank you so very much."

Lizzie's genuine gratitude warmed Stephanie's heart. In the end, Steph also bought her a pair of fog lights and vanity plates with her name on them.

As they rode through the city that morning, Stephanie found herself becoming uncharacteristically chatty. She had a new friend, and she hadn't been so happy in weeks. On the way home, Lizzie became so very excited at the description of the cliff house with its built-in garage. She had a sweet and bubbly disposition, and she expressed an endearingly childlike wonder with life. The little car also had a backbone and nerves of steel, and she never shied away from the challenges that would later come her way. Lizzie was always thankful to Steph for taking such loving care of her, and she always tried as hard as she could to make Stephanie happy. She accomplished her mission by just being herself. Stephanie came to love her dearly.

Because Steph's new house was mostly poured reinforced concrete, and because the interior was a mostly open design, the house was finished by May 1^st, of 2001. Steph was sick to death of living in a trailer, and Lizzie couldn't wait to move into their new digs. By early June, all the alarms, traps, and furnishings were completed. Steph had the oil tanks filled, and she charged up the solar batteries. At night, lamps shone through the great windows, making Steph's home appear like a lighthouse beacon above the bay.

Steph spent most of her evenings downstairs in the garage with Lizzie, watching DVD movies on the flat screen plasma TV she'd set up there. Lizzie Cooper adored the cinema, laughing, fretting, and crying with the action. Steph kept a couch, microwave, and refrigerator on a piece of carpet in the middle bay of her garage. It reminded her of the apartment she'd lost. Her proper living room upstairs was seldom actually used. Many an early morning found Stephanie curled up asleep on the couch, empty long necks and ashtrays cluttering the floor, the TV screen awash with static, while Lizzie dozed peacefully in the bay beside her. It was a time of bonding, and on other nights, like Archie had loved to do, they'd sit in the yard with the lights off, watching the stars.

In mid-June 2001, Stephanie and Lizzie celebrated Steph's 30^th birthday. They started at daybreak, driving east, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, and picking up I-205 to SR-120. They followed the winding road, Lizzie reveling in the ups and downs. Between the towns of Moccasin and Priest, the road became a torturous winding track, and Lizzie flew around the curves, her ecstatic cry of "Wheeeeeeeeee!" ringing through the clear air. Steph was laughing with joy; her hands clasped comfortably behind her head as she leaned back in the seat, watching the scenery go by.

After three hours of driving, they passed the park gates and drove into Yosemite National Park. Lizzie and Steph threaded Big Oak Rd. down Yosemite Canyon, high above the Merced River. Topping the opposite side of the valley rose Turtleback Dome and Inspiration Point. The little yellow car slowed, craning up on her tires to see the heights above as Steph pointed them out from the park map.

For some time, a distant roaring sound had been increasing in volume. When they rounded a curve, Bridalveil Fall was revealed across the river, where its waters plunged 620 feet into a cloud of spume above the green carpet of the forest. Lizzie stopped dead in the road to watch until Steph took over the driving. She hadn't touched the wheel since before Moccasin an hour earlier. Now Steph followed the road letting Lizzie take in the sights. The roaring was coming from another source up ahead now, but the next breathtaking view was of El Capitan, rising almost next to them on their left. Further up a valley, the waters of tall Ribbon Fall plunged in an endless stream.

They pulled off into a scenic overlook, and Lizzie "Ooooooh'd" and "Ahhhhhh'd", before exclaiming, "Oh look, Stephanie, look! Why, bless me, there are people climbing on the face of the cliff!" And so there were.

El Capitan was a Mecca for rock climbers from around the world. Stephanie watched the tiny figures' slow progress. A part of her wished that she could be on that sheer face too, looking out over the world below, with nothing but her ropes, her knowledge, her strength, and her courage keeping her safe.

"Oh, Stephanie, why it's just the most wonderful place I have ever seen, it is," Lizzie declared with heartfelt gratitude, "I can't thank you enough for showing it to me. I'm so very happy!" The little yellow car was deeply affected by the natural beauty around her. It was her most hoped for reward in motoring, the dearest payoff of her very existence.

"Honey, you're so welcome," Steph said, smiling at her friend, "come on, I'll get these people to take some pictures of us together up here."

She'd been snapping photographs of the scenery all along, and now Stephanie handed her camera to a father, visiting the park with his wife and two sons. He snapped several shots of Steph and Lizzie, posing together with the valley as a backdrop. Eventually, Steph would have them enlarged and framed. They hung, adorning the walls in the garage, a reminder of their happy adventure. After the pictures, Steph pulled out a long neck, a sandwich, and corn chips, and sat at a picnic table enjoying a quick lunch, while Lizzie turned in a slow circle, trying to commit the panorama to memory. The family eyed them curiously form the next table.

They chattered happily on their drive home, thrilled by what they had seen, and both deeply contented with the day and the company. Lizzie found that she had come to love her new country and her new mistress. Lights were winking on in the city, as they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and dark had already fallen fully when they pulled into the garage. It had been a long day, but they finished it with the traditional cake and ice cream, Lizzie raising her clear sweet voice to sing "Happy Birthday" to Steph. She sang the well-known lines, meaning them with all her heart.

In the concrete garage above the San Francisco Bay, the hero veteran leader of the police bomb removal team, a deadly champion martial artist, and a woman with a life filled with heartbreak, hugged a small yellow car and cried tears of happiness. Like the cloudbursts that bring forth a wealth of flowers, a welcome respite had again come to the desert.

A few nights later, movie time was interrupted by the floodlights snapping on in the yard in reaction to the motion detectors. The video monitors showed a chase in progress near the East Rd. section of the property. It appeared that a pack of coyotes were chasing a shadow. Stephanie slipped a magazine into her M4 carbine, picked up a pair of nightvision goggles, and went out to take a look. Even from the house, she could hear the yapping and disturbance of the undergrowth. Approaching with caution, she lowered the goggles for a quick look. Sure enough, beyond the floodlights, a half dozen coyotes were frantically leaping and snapping under a spreading cedar, threatening someone who remained invisible in the shadowed branches above. Steph raised the goggles. Slipping off the safety, she fired a burst over their heads. The appreciable muzzle flash and noise startled the coyotes into flight. They turned tail and disappeared into the underbrush.

Thinking they'd treed a trespasser, Stephanie shined her 6 D-cell Maglight into the branches, holding it parallel to the carbine's barrel. About 15 feet up she discerned a pair of pale eyes.

"Hey you," Steph yelled, "get your sorry ass down here before I fill your hide with lead."

For a moment there was silence, and the eyes blinked. Then a tired and irritated voice answered, "Oh puuuhleeease. First dogs and now a cowgirl…whatever happened to this peaceful neighborhood?"

The eyes winked out, just disappeared, and Steph carefully aimed up at where they had been. She was about to squeeze off a burst when something sizeable hit the ground behind her. Stephanie tucked and rolled, coming to her knees and whirling to cover the area. There was nothing there but air. Then Steph felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising, and a warm gentle breath on her back.

"Can we perhaps talk about this?" The voice asked calmly. Stephanie was anything but calm. She threw herself sideways, recovering into a prone shooting position. She looked through her sights into the pool of brightness from her Maglight and saw an unlikely figure sitting on its haunches regarding her. The figure tilted its head quizzically and asked, "Is this all really necessary?"

Stephanie didn't lower the carbine. These animals were wild and dangerous, and although this one was apparently cultured, she wasn't ready to trust it yet.

"Just what are you doing here," she demanded, "I live here, it's my property, you're trespassing."

"You're quoting the consequences of human laws, and they don't apply to me," the figure informed her with a sigh, as if speaking to a retarded child. "Besides, I was here first, years ago, when the Japanese and his pig lived here…before the ostrich. Anyway, you have nothing I want, and I doubt I have anything you'd want. Can't we just get along?"

Stephanie lowered the carbine slightly. What he said was probably true.

"That's it…easy there girl, it's ok. I won't hurt you…it's ok now. Don't worry, everything's going to be alright." He was talking to her as if she were a scared animal. It was ridiculous. Steph slowly rose to her feet. "That's better, why don't you put that gun down, we could have an accident here. It would be…unfortunate."

Steph lowered the carbine, still somewhat nervous. The cougar probably weighed more than she did, had proven itself to be possessed of unnatural stealth and a high level of intelligence, and was obviously familiar with the terrain. It would be a crafty and deadly adversary. Stephanie realized that it had already passed up two opportunities to kill her, and it hadn't even seemed to be trying.

"Look, I think we can come to an arrangement," the cougar offered reasonably, "we can simply ignore each other and for all practical purposes, we shall cease to exist, in so far as our mutual experiences of this land are concerned."

"Somehow, that seems like a waste," Steph mused, "I mean, isn't there some way we can help each other? We both love this piece of land at least."

"Sure there is," he answered, "you watch the stars and your movies, and I'll inspect the trees and the land, check the fog and sample the air, mind the animals and encourage the plants. I need to do my job, like my ancestors have since the last cold time."

"Well, maybe I could drive off the coyotes if you'd be willing to scare off trespassers."

"Those dogs?" The cougar asked with just a hint of disdain. "They're part of all this," he continued, gesturing to their surroundings with a sweep of a paw, "they belong here. Distasteful as they are, they have duties here. They don't bother me."

"But they had you trapped up that tree," Steph pointed out. Her words brought a soft chuckle in response.

"My dear girl, those dogs have an attention span of no more than 5 to 10 minutes. Really, unless reminded of my presence by my scent, they'd soon have forgotten why they were even there. We've been through that time and again, they and I, and we are all still here."

"But could you drive off human trespassers for me? I have enemies and they blew up my last home; they killed Barney and Brittanie. I know that sooner or later they'll come for me again, even though I managed to kill a couple of them recently…."

The cougar started at her words. "They killed Barney? Why, I spoke with him on several occasions…he and the pig, Mattie. I had wondered why he wasn't here with you now. He was a reasonable fellow, a bobcat rather than a lynx, as I recall. I'm very sorry to hear that. Brittanie was the Desoto?"

"Yes, and she was my friend," Steph told him sadly, "they were my family and I loved them both."

The cougar came forward and leaned gently against Steph's legs, then sat partly on her boots and curled his tail around his feet. "I'm so sorry, my dear. They were both special, and I had actually grown fond of them during our few meetings over the years. My sincerest condolences."

"Thank you," Stephanie said softly, blinking back tears, "I will never cease to miss them, but at least I have a new friend, Lizzie Cooper. I hope we can be friends too."

"Lizzie Cooper?" The cougar asked before reasoning it out. "The little yellow car?"

"Yes, that's Lizzie. She's a Mini Cooper and she's from Great Britain."

"Ah, a Mini Cooper, yes, I should have known," the cougar mused, "if I may advise you, Stephanie, I'm a fairly good judge of personality, if I may say so myself. I have to be in my position, of course. Lizzie is a sweet girl, and she's a very loyal sort. I can tell. I would implore you to treat her with the utmost kindness and respect, for she deserves no less. I sense that she'd willingly give up her life for you. Make sure you remain worthy of her trust. You were very lucky to find her. She needs a loving friend, for her sensitive spirit would be crushed by neglect or disregard. Never take her love for granted."

"Believe me, I would never mistreat her," Steph said sincerely, "I love her dearly and she's all the family I have. I love her like a little sister."

The cougar looked deeply into Steph's eyes, and seemed to read her heart. Finally he nodded as if he approved of her. "Stephanie, might I impose upon you to introduce us?"

"Ummm, well sure, I guess," Steph replied, a little uncertainly, "we'd been watching a movie. Lizzie loves movies. Why don't you come to join us?"

"Thank you, Stephanie," the cougar agreed, after looking up at the moon as if checking the time, "I think I'd like that very much."

They walked back to the house, and Steph unlocked the garage door and they went in. Stephanie introduced Lizzie and the cougar to each other, and the two seemed to get along very well. The cougar seemed reserved, very polite, even solicitous, while Lizzie appeared charmed by his manners and knowledge of their part of the world. He was surprisingly well traveled, despite his duties to the local landscape, having explored much of California and Oregon, as well as ranging east through Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and even parts of Utah. Lizzie listened in awe to his descriptions of the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, and the Great Salt Lake. The cougar politely listened to Lizzie's recollections of her Atlantic crossing on the freighter from England, questioning her at several points. They shared popcorn and tostados that Stephanie quickly fixed upstairs.

When she'd returned with the tray of food, she'd quietly watched the interaction of the cougar and the little car. Steph had noted his attentiveness, her lilting laughter, and the slight embarrassment they'd displayed when they'd realized that they had been staring at each other a bit too long.

They're flirting, Stephanie realized, smiling. Lizzie is eating up his attention; she's charmed by the look of it, and the cougar seems to be developing a crush…already had it, judging from his words outside earlier, she realized. She came in with the tostados and the conversation stopped for a moment, then began to flow again, now including her. It was the first of many nights the three shared together, and amazingly, the cougar could even converse knowledgeably about the cinema, as Lizzie called it.

Before he took his leave in the early morning, Stephanie asked if he had a name.

"No, Stephanie, I have no individual name. I'm simply the cougar of this area, and in the past that has been sufficient."

"But you're a person," Steph had protested, "and you should have a name because you're an individual unlike any other."

The cougar had seemed amused by Stephanie's assertion, noticing the slight sway in her stance from the Buds and the fact that the Camel she was holding had burned down nearly to her fingers. Finally he'd decided to humor his hostess. "What would you like to call me, Stephanie?"

"Well, you're kinda in charge of the forest here," Steph said, "and I guess that makes you a star. There's a rock star named John Cougar. Can I call you John?"

The cougar had smiled indulgently and agreed. "Very well, Stephanie, John Cougar it is. I believe I'm the first in my family to have a name. I thank you." He had said a long goodbye to Lizzie, promising to return soon, and then disappeared into the night, blending into the shadows like a ghost.

"Why, Stephanie, I do believe I've been smitten, as it were," Lizzie declared with a conspiratorial giggle, "he's a charming chap, if I may say so. I do hope to see him again shortly."

Stephanie grinned and patted her friend's fender. "Think you'll be getting any sleep at all tonight? Or is your heart fluttering too quick to rest?"

"Oh, goodness me, I haven't the foggiest, cross my heart," Lizzie had confessed. Then they had both cracked up laughing. Steph had put out the lights, and she lay in the dark on her couch, whispering back and forth with her friend until they dozed off like two schoolgirls at a slumber party.

The summer of 2001 blended into fall. Stephanie and Lizzie watched movies and entertained John Cougar several nights a week. In the daytime, Steph trained her team and deactivated bombs. Lizzie spent the days in the Central Precinct parking lot, safely surrounded by patrol cars and special purpose vehicles. For the most part, they were polite, a few afflicted by excessive macho, a few surprisingly lighthearted despite being involved in such violent occupations. She made a few good friends; the hilarious crew of mopeds, the mild mannered SWAT personnel carrier, and the morose bomb disposal truck who loved her accent, and became self-conscious and tongue tied when they were parked next to each other.

The other officers had a few unsettling moments when they'd actually noticed that Stephanie's Mini Cooper seemed to have moved about the parking lot while Steph was at work. She always left the keys in the ignition, another practice they found disturbing. One incident stood out. A patrolwoman, about to start her shift, came out to pick up a cruiser in the lot. She stood in shocked amazement as Lizzie pulled out of a space and trundled over to join her friend, the personnel carrier, for a chat. No one was driving the little yellow car, which finally noticed her, appeared to do a double take, and then slunk into the space as if she'd been caught red handed at a crime.

"Oops," Lizzie had exclaimed to the personnel carrier as she looked back at the patrolwoman, who was standing by the station doors rubbing her eyes. The cop hurried back into the precinct house.

"Bad girl," the carrier admonished with a chuckle, "that had to happen sooner or later, you know."

"Oh, bless me, I know," Lizzie had agreed, unrepentant, "but I get so unbearably itchy sitting all day long in one place. God gave us wheels for a reason, don't you know."

The mopeds were giggling and making comments, like misbehaving school children caught by their teacher, such as, "Ohhh, Lizzie's in trouble now," and the like.

The patrolwoman had soon controlled her shock. She'd rushed to the security office, where she proceeded to view the videotape from the cameras that overlooked the parking lot. What she saw upset her even more. Since Stephanie had first arrived at just before 8 a.m., the Mini Cooper had changed parking spaces no less than three times, never with a driver in attendance, and seemingly at random. She'd started out next to a patrol car, moved over to the mopeds, crossed the lot to sit for a while beside the bomb disposal truck, and finally crossed back to a space next to the personnel carrier. The officer hurried into the captain's office to report her discovery. It was almost noon.

Out in the parking lot, Lizzie Cooper had returned to her original parking space so that Stephanie wouldn't have to search for her when she went for lunch. She never let her socializing interfere with her duties to her mistress. She was Steph's friend, first and foremost.

When the patrol officer finally got the captain's attention, she dragged her into the security office and showed her the videotape. They looked at the monitor, watching as the little yellow car returned to the original space that Stephanie had first parked it in. They saw Steph emerge from the Quonset hut, unlock her car, and drive off to lunch with two of her team members. Neither could explain what they'd seen, and the captain was anxious to hear what Steph would have to say.

Over the years, the captain had found relatively little reason to have anything to do with Sergeant Stephanie Walker. She recalled the woman's surprisingly successful career as a uniformed patrolwoman. All those crimes on her beat had been solved without explanation, but the evidence was always sound when they got to court.

What the sergeant did in her Quonset hut was a mystery to the captain, mostly, and she tended to leave well enough alone. She really didn't want to know. The few times she'd ventured out there, it had been weird and disturbing. Shoving the office door open and starting a bomb ticking, for example. She'd nearly wet her panties and hadn't even admonished Steph for smoking indoors. The rest of the bomb removal team was the same way. They smoked and drank, and sometimes they could be heard out there, singing really badly, but the city hadn't blown up yet. Capt. Martinez assumed that their behavior was attendant to living under such a stressful mission assignment. At least the bomb search team was still presentable, with their hardass Spec Ops mindset and their bomb-sniffing dogs.

Captain Martinez was nearing her retirement, having served nearly 30 years, but she remembered the day when Steph had come into her office and accepted the job with the bomb disposal unit. She remembered the strange conversation they'd had that morning. She remembered the notation in the psychological profile. Steph liked to name things.

At 1:05 p.m., Stephanie and her teammates returned from the Sun Kwong Restaurant, happily stuffed with the eggplant fu yung lunch special. Steph parked Lizzie and closed up the doors. The captain was waiting at the entrance to the station house and beckoned her over. Lizzie seemed to cringe.

"Sergeant Walker, would you please join me and Officer Davidson in my office?" It was not really a request.

"Sure, Captain Martinez," Stephanie responded. Though she thought the woman a bit dull witted, she'd always maintained a professional respect for her position. Steph shrugged, crushed out a Camel, and walked over. Officer Davidson, she didn't know at all. She appeared to be an excitable young blonde, probably an aerobicized vegan, and relatively new on the force. She was fidgeting, and Steph found it annoying.

They made their way to the captain's office, taking seats and facing a TV with a built-in VCR, which sat on a side table. Steph looked for popcorn, but detected none.

"Before we start, is there anything you'd like to tell me about your car?" Captain Martinez asked Steph. Officer Davidson was watching Stephanie closely, which Steph found even more annoying.

"Such as…?" Steph responded. She was remembering her Army training. When confronted with accusations, admit nothing, disregard the charges, and make counter accusations.

"Never mind," the captain said, confidently hefting the remote and starting the tape.

Stephanie sat calmly watching as the surveillance tape showed her leaving the lot that morning. Then, in jerky time lapse footage, she saw Lizzie relocating herself several times around the lot. The footage ended with Lizzie returning to her original spot right before Steph drove off for lunch. Afterwards, the three women sat in silence.

"So can I go now?" Steph asked innocently.

The captain looked at her in disbelief. The patrolwoman was fidgeting again.

"No, you can't go now," Capt. Martinez exclaimed, "I want an explanation, Sergeant Walker. What did we just see here?"

Steph sighed. They were making such a mountain out of a molehill. Still no popcorn had appeared.

"Nothing, captain," she responded, sounding bored, "just some dull footage of the parking lot."

Captain Martinez's eyes bugged out, and Officer Davidson gagged. Steph continued to look at them with a bored expression, revealing nothing.

"Excuse me, but we just saw your car moving about the lot without a driver," Davidson claimed. The captain nodded in agreement. Stephanie looked at them in disbelief.

"You are both mad," Stephanie pronounced with certainty, "a car does not move without a driver, except sometimes downhill by accident. Are you seriously claiming that my car drove itself?"

"But, that's what we just saw," the captain claimed, looking back at the VCR.

It struck Stephanie as sad, the slow-witted captain and the excitable rookie. She examined them with an expression of condescending pity.

"I am going to recommend that we forget this incident," Stephanie offered, slowly shaking her head, "otherwise, I will have to report it to the department psychologist as evidence of mental instability. Whatever you think you saw was probably just reflections, weather balloons, or maybe swamp gas anyway," she told them charitably.

The captain and the patrolwoman looked at each other uncertainly. Stephanie took the initiative, rising from her seat and ejecting the tape. She shoved it into a thigh pocket of her BDUs and headed for the door while the other two women watched her in shock.

"I think that for the good of your careers I should remove this temptation to besmirch your own reputations. I understand the stress of this job, and I would hate to see either of you commit professional suicide." She said the last looking pointedly at the captain.

Steph fled from the office with her heart pounding as she lit a Camel. Had she screwed up? Was besmirch actually a word? As soon as she cleared the station doorway, she headed directly for Lizzie. Lizzie saw her coming and tried to scrunch down in her parking space, remorseful for having gotten Steph in trouble.

"Don't worry hon," Steph reassured her, to the little car's immense relief, "they were simpleminded and highly impressionable, as I had thought all along. They won't say anything about you wandering around the lot all day." Here Steph actually laughed. Lizzie looked up at her and smiled. The last thing she had ever wanted was to create a problem for Stephanie.

"I'm sorry," Lizzie apologized, hanging her front-end, "I just wanted to chat up my friends, don't you know, and it's so very dull sitting all day in one space."

"I understand, sweetheart," Steph told her, "it would make me go crazy too. Tell you what. We'll get you a car phone, and when you want to move, just page me and I'll come out and take a Camel break with you. It'll look as if I'm moving you and finally complying with the smoking regulations. Then you can always talk to your friends."

"I'm really to have a car phone?" Lizzie asked excitedly, "a phone of my very own?"

"Yes, hon," Steph confirmed, "Brittanie had one and she really loved it. I should have thought of this long ago. We'll do it this evening right after work."

"Oh, Stephanie, thank you, thank you, thank you," Lizzie gushed. She was practically dancing on her tires.

Back in her office, Capt. Martinez and Officer Davidson watched out the window as Steph talked to her car and the car bobbed and bounced on its springs. They looked at each other, but neither said a thing. Sergeant Walker was definitely insane, the captain thought, dangerously insane, but she could threaten their careers, one near finishing, the other just starting. Neither wanted to cross the hero of the bomb squad in an altercation that would probably receive significant media coverage. The news people still loved Stephanie Walker, in spite of the rat incident. They'd become sympathetic after the bombing of her apartment, seeing their ratings jump as they milked the story of criminal retribution against a heroic public servant. Although there were probably similar surveillance tapes of the parking lot from other days, neither of them was willing to become associated with unbelievable charges when there was nothing to be gained by bringing them.

Lizzie got her cell phone, her "chatty phone", as she called it, that very night. She immediately began calling at all hours of the day, though out of consideration for Steph, she reserved the calls to her friends in Merry Old England for the evenings and weekends. Lizzie especially loved to call the local radio stations, commenting on the talk shows and requesting songs. She even won free movie tickets for Stephanie, answering call-in questions about the cinema. The DJs seemed to love her accent and came to recognize her on their call ID boxes. Several flirted with her, asking personal questions on-air, (which she never answered), and calling her back off-air requesting dates, (which she couldn't accept, being as she was, more interested in John Cougar). Several of them started sending her obscure bootleg music CDs.

In September of 2001, Stephanie was called out to remove a bomb in Candlestick Park's 3COM Park stadium. Her pager had sounded at 1:30 p.m., and she ran to Lizzie with her gear bag. They took off across town, weaving through the traffic on US-101, Lizzie giggling as she threaded tiny spaces between other cars. Steph closed her eyes and let Lizzie drive, covering her head with both hands; her crash position was less than reassuring to other drivers who were close enough to see into the speeding Mini Cooper.

Lizzie screeched off US-101 at the Beatty Ave. exit, executing a perfect four-wheel drift across the path of a garbage truck. It cursed her roundly with a groaning of its compactor. They zipped down Alana to Harney Way, finally turning onto the Hunter's Point Expressway to approach 3COM stadium from the bay side. The 49ers were scheduled to play the Redskins that weekend, and the captain had been snippy. Bitch, Steph thought, she's still pissed about that videotape thingie.

They skidded to a halt in the parking lot, next to the main entrance, in the stiff afternoon breeze. Lizzie shimmied to settle herself, seeming to squint against the blowing dust. Steph leapt out with her gear bag. Across the lot, she could see the search team already caging their dogs. They had found a single massive device next to a critical structural member, below the offices and ticket windows. The team had fled as quickly as possible.

Stephanie took two of her team members with her, leaving the other three to prepare for the evacuation of the disarmed device. As they headed towards the stadium doors, Steph spied the approaching vans from the three local TV stations. One of them had already spotted Lizzie, and was headed her way, hoping for comments off the record. Oh just what she needs right now, Steph thought, she's already worrying herself into a perforated muffler, fretting about me being in danger, poor girl. Then they were inside, in the dimmer hallway with the ticket windows hidden behind their roll down security barricades.

Despite their frantic and terrified flight out of the building, the bomb search team had adequately marked the path to the device. A series of red flags, dog droppings, and yellowish puddles pointed the way unerringly to a stairwell, leading down to the offices, storage rooms, and the foundation. They could hear the timer on the device ticking from thirty feet away in the silent basement. Cheesy and melodramatic, Stephanie thought, before calling out, "Are we getting this on tape?"

"Oh yeah, Sarg," a team member replied, glancing down at the Handycam he was panning over the scene. Steph could tell he was unsteady with the camera.

"Everyone smile before we don hoods," Steph ordered, crushing out a Camel, "and hide that bottle! What are you crazy? This is going on the 5:00 p.m. news, if it leaks like all the others. The dept. loves to show us off when we save their asses. Gets votes ya know."

"Sure, Steph, sorry."

"Okay, you know we can't fuck up in this business, people. The captain already hates me and the mayor is looking for votes. That means the commissioner's job is on the line too. They're snarling at each other and looking for scapegoats, so we gotta keep our heads down. Now let's concentrate and see what we have here."

"Uh, Steph? They'll edit that off, right?"

"Of course they will," Stephanie relied, "they'll probably mostly show the search team with their mutts anyway. They just cut to us when we take out the bomb."

"That sucks, those guys are a bunch of wimps…just because they dress all fashionable and shit."

"Enough, people!" Steph barked. "Now there's the device, and it looks like a real killer. Geeez that thing's big. I'll bet the charge is a thousand pounds at least. This is serious, they really wanted to bring the stadium down." Steph realized that the person who had created this device was a real pervert. It actually looked like a bomb, the first time she'd ever seen such a thing. Usually they were made to appear innocuous, or else they were bare bones, an exposed charge and timer held together with duct tape. This device had a full steel exterior, and like the GIs had in Desert Storm, it had been graffitied. A cartoon shark face had been crudely painted on one end, and the words, "Saddam Lives", had been scrawled in the same ghastly red Krylon.

They were approaching it carefully now, but at twenty feet, Steph stopped them dead in their tracks. She'd spotted the fish. A Big Mouth Billy Bass toy was attached to a pillar ten feet from the bomb, with a pair of wires leading to the device. The cheap motion-sensing toy was rigged as a booby trap. Ingenious, thought Steph with approval. The dogs went below the beam, and the search team chickened out before getting that close. She waved her people back.

"Set up the camera thirty feet back and put it on manual focus and exposure. I don't want any stray infrared beams around here. You make Billy Bass over there sing, and you can kiss your ass goodbye," Steph instructed, pointing to the fish.

"Hey, I had one of those," the cameraman admitted, "it played, 'Don't Worry Be Happy' and 'Take Me to the River'. The tail would flap and the mouth actually sang the words while the head moved back and forth. I loved that toy, but my dog chewed it up. Hey Steph, if we don't die, can I have this one?"

God it figures, Steph thought, while working her way around the back of the fish. Serves him right for having a dog.

"It's evidence," Steph told him, pulling a battery pack with four "C" cells in it out of her gear bag, "it's part of a terrorist bomb…of course you can have it, just remember to wipe this part off the video and no one will know, 'kay?" They regularly pocketed cool stuff off their jobs. Even Archie had taken unexploded secondary charges home. It was an accepted job perk.

Stephanie checked the wires leading from the back of the Big Mouth Billy Bass, held her battery pack leads next to it, and then stripped away some insulation. She deftly replaced the wires leading to the fish with the wires leading to the battery pack. Now the current feeding the circuit from the booby trap remained, but the danger posed by the fish triggering it was neutralized.

"Take your damn fish," she told her teammate, "it's deactivated."

The cameraman had set up the camera on a tripod, racked the lens to telephoto, and locked the focus and exposure. He happily pulled the Billy Bass toy off the pillar and stuffed it into his gear bag. Then he restarted the recording.

Steph recalled later that it had been a nerve-wracking job. Just the look of the bomb, which resembled something she dimly remembered from the History Channel's WWII series, was bad enough. They had probed it with their worm eye cameras and stethoscopes. They had removed screws with non-sparking titanium wrenches. They had avoided magnets, static discharges, radio waves, infrared and ultraviolet radiation. They had even whispered around it. The whole time, its loud and endless ticking had gotten on their nerves. They'd desperately wanted it to stop and simultaneously prayed that it wouldn't. After 10 minutes, they'd been soaked in sweat.

After 45 minutes, the team had a pile of hardware on the floor at their feet. A timer had been revealed. It was made from a Xena Warrior Princess wall clock, its ominous ticking greatly magnified by the steel housing. A pair of "AA" cells powered it. Attached to the clock were the expected detonator and a full 150-lbs of Tri-Nitro-Toluene. The charge was shaped into a cylinder, with a dense 9 1/2 lb. gray metal hemisphere about the size of a half-grapefruit at one end. There was a steel tube for the hemisphere to slide down, and at the far end, another identical hemisphere glowed dimly. It all accounted for perhaps a tenth of the bomb's volume. The rest seemed to be lead shielding and Styrofoam.

"What the hell," Steph wondered aloud, "why go to all this trouble to shove two hemispheres of metal together? I could do it by hand." The whole thing was ridiculous, but she still had a nasty feeling about it. She stuffed the Xena wall clock into her gear bag. It was a perk of the job.

"Call the truck and let's get out of here," she ordered, tossing the metal domes back into the bomb casing and staring at the camera, "that's a wrap."