“My goodness,” she said, her eyes now fixed on the portraits hanging behind his desk. “That fellow with the powdered wig looks just like your father.” “That is my father, Yolanda. And that's not a wig.”

After the British surrender just down the road at Yorktown, many mercenaries who wore the red coats and who also had tired of the pip-pip crap, shucked their lobsterbacks, donned homespun duds and took up a new life in the New World. One of them was a man

“Manny said no, but I got the feeling he was too scared to admit it if he had. That's when he told me to keep his name out of the story.”

Then a nurse switches the monitors off, someone lifts a sheet over the patient's head, masks are yanked from faces, and everyone exits.

Annette's brow crinkled, and her face transitioned through confusion and disbelief to comprehension, and she seemed for an instant almost relieved.

This was when they heard the front door chimes. Blow froze. He held up a hand to warn Annette. He knew it wasn't Callahan.

A sole proprietor, she engaged in the world's oldest profession because she greatly enjoyed the physical interaction and, at first, as a means to support her simple needs. Her primary interest was writing fiction.

Slapping the notebook shut he swung his legs off the bed, stood up, dashed downstairs to his office, grabbed his jacket and dashed out the door to his truck.