Renee lay on the orange flowered bedspread in that ugly little motel room, staring at the cracked ceiling, crying until she didn’t have a tear left to shed. It was as if a hole had opened up inside her with nothing to fill it, and the pain it caused was excruciating. She’d thought she knew what kind of man John was, but a few angry words from his brother and he’d turned his back on her, depositing her at this crummy motel as easily as taking out the trash.
Her head pounding, she reached for the phone and called Paula. Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on that ugly orange bedspread together, and she was telling Paula the whole story. She told her about how she’d gone back to John and he’d pledged to help her, and how they thought maybe the talent show might hold the key to finding the real culprit, and then how Alex had shown up and John had turned his back on her.
She’d intended to leave out the part about making love with him and about how she’d come to trust him so much. But when she got to talking, those tears she thought had left her for good came back with a vengeance, and suddenly she was spilling everything. Through it all, Paula nodded sympathetically, letting her tell the story without passing judgment, which was what Paula did best and why Renee loved having her for a friend.
“I think he forgot for a while that he was a cop,” Renee said, wishing her headache would go away. “His brother reminded him.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”
Renee sniffled, and Paula got her another handful of tissues from the bathroom.
“I can’t tell you how he made me feel,” Renee said, dabbing her eyes. “Like nothing could hurt me. And then…this.”
She wanted to hate him. She wanted so desperately to hate him so she could replace the pain she felt with anger, but she couldn’t. Every time she tried to picture slapping him, she pictured kissing him instead.
“So what are you going to do now?” Paula asked.
Renee thought about the life that lay ahead of her, and she had no idea which way to turn. “I don’t know.”
“So you really think the robber was a man?”
“It’s possible.”
“So what about the talent show?”
“What about it?”
“Do you think the person who committed that robbery will be there?”
Renee blinked. “It’s possible, I guess.”
“So are you going?”
She thought about that for a moment, about how John and Alex had both decided it would be an exercise in futility. Then she thought about how neither of them was facing an armed robbery accusation, and if they were, they just might see things a little differently.
The longer she thought about it, the more she realized that it was the only chance she had to get out of this mess without running for the rest of her life. She had absolutely nothing to lose.
“Yes,” she said suddenly. “I’m going there.”
“You are?”
“Yes. The talent show starts tomorrow night at nine o’clock, and I’m going to be there.” Her conviction gained momentum as she spoke. “And I’m going to find some answers.”
“Good for you!”
“Will you come with me?”
Paula froze, her excitement deflating like a popped balloon. “Uh…me?”
“Yes. I could use another set of eyes, not to mention the moral support.”
Paula’s expression got a little shaky. “Won’t we, you know…look out of place?”
“Why would we look out of place?”
“Because we look like women. We don’t look like men trying to look like women.”
“A lot of women go to drag shows.”
“They do?”
“Yeah. I went to one once. I saw a lot of women. The only way we’ll look out of place is if we don’t dress up. We need to wear lots of makeup. Short skirts. High heels. A whole bunch of sparkly stuff.”
“I’m not exactly the sparkly type. I don’t own anything like that.”
“Sure you do! How about that dress you wore last New Year’s Eve?”
Paula winced. “I spilled a glass of wine on it. I never could get the stain out.”
“Okay, then. Go to my apartment and get that red dress of mine. The super-short one. And get the black one with the sequins for you.”
“I can’t wear that dress! You’re two sizes smaller than I am!”
“It’s stretchy.”
“A fabric hasn’t been made that’s that stretchy. And I’m not exactly the sequins type.”
“Trust me. It’ll be fine. We’ll wear the highest heels we’ve got, and maybe stockings with seams. Do you have a feather boa?”
Paula looked at her pointedly.
“Okay. Forget the boa. But find us some hats. I have to hide this hair of mine. And dark glasses. I don’t want anyone recognizing me.”
“How many people do you know who go to places like that?”
“I don’t want to take any chances.”
“This is crazy.”
“Paula. I need you.”
“Come on, Renee! This sounds like something Lucy and Ethel would do. Lucy would come up with something goofy, and Ethel would tell her uh-uh, nope, not gonna do it—”
“And then she’d do it anyway.”
Paula sighed.
“Because she loves Lucy.”
“You’re killing me, Renee.”
“It’s my only shot at getting out of this mess. You have to help me.” Renee eyed her friend carefully. “Paula? Are you with me?”
Paula dropped her head to her hands. “Tom would die if he knew I was doing this.”
“But Tom’s not going to know, is he?”
“He has an evening lecture at school tomorrow night. We’re not even planning on seeing each other.”
“That’s perfect.”
“Promise me you won’t tell him.”
“Believe me—this is one thing I’d just as soon he not know.”
Paula lifted her head again. “Okay,” she said on a sigh. “I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Renee took a deep breath. Her headache had subsided a bit, and she didn’t feel like crying anymore. Those were definitely steps in the right direction.
But then she leaned back against a pillow, and all at once she pictured lying not in this bed, but in John’s. Hazy images played through her mind—images of his hands and his mouth and the feel of his softly spoken words fanning against her ear, and she desperately wanted to go back a few days in time and experience it all over again—right up to the time Alex had barged through the door.
Paula patted her arm. “You’ll get over him, sweetie. It just takes time.”
Renee started to protest that she wasn’t thinking about John at all, but Paula knew her too well. “Do you know I’ve never been in love before?”
“Never?”
“No. Not really.”
“But you were in love with him?”
It seemed so silly now, but just for a while, when they’d been together…
“I think I could have been. If he’d been the man I thought he was.”
Renee knew that Paula, being that glass-half-full kind of person, wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right. Instead, she just patted her hand again and gave her a bittersweet smile.
“You look tired. Get some sleep. I’ll stock up on what we need and come back tomorrow night about seven o’clock.”
She gave Renee another hug and slipped out the door. Renee locked it behind her and collapsed on the bed again, trying not to think about how thin the thread of hope was that she was hanging on to, because if she thought about it, she’d go crazy. Then she decided it was less painful to think about that than it was to think about John.
She might be able to prove her innocence tomorrow night. But nothing she did would ever bring John back.
At eight fifteen the next evening, Paula pulled her car into a parking space along Colfax Street and killed the engine. She turned to Renee with an expression of apprehension.
“You look…great,” Renee told her.
“No. I look like a cheap hooker. A hooker so cheap she can’t afford to buy new clothes when she outgrows the old ones. That’s what I look like.”
“The hat’s nice.”
“I have a peacock on top of my head!”
Renee patted the fashion statement on her own head. “I said you could wear this one if you wanted to.”
“Purple satin with pearls? Now, there’s a choice. I can either look like a big-tailed bird or the Queen of England, assuming she had extremely bad taste.”
“Where did you say you got them?”
“The thrift store down on Market Street. They had lots of hats. These were the attractive ones.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Tell me again about how we’re going to find the guy who committed the robbery and get you off the hook.”
“It’s my only hope. And I’m eternally grateful to you for putting on that god-awful outfit to help me.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get this over with.”
They simultaneously slid their sunglasses on, got out of the car and approached the club. Even standing on the sidewalk outside, Renee heard the music pulsing inside, and when she opened the door, it took a minute for her eardrums to accept the assault and stop rattling around inside her head.
Once inside, she glanced around and saw a window that looked like a box office. It appeared there was a cover charge. They went to the window, where a guy clad in a blue-sequined dress and big hoop earrings sat behind it counting money. His blond-tipped black hair stood out from his head like a mutant dandelion.
“Ten dollars, ladies,” he said, in a voice a few octaves higher than the one he was born with. Paula stood over to one side to avoid even looking at the guy. Renee handed him twenty dollars to cover both her and Paula, and they turned to walk through the door leading to the main room.
“Wait just a minute!” the guy at the window shouted.
They froze, casting sidelong glances at each other. Renee waited for him to fly out of the booth, clamp a hand on her shoulder, and tell her he knew who she was, he was calling the cops, and she was going back to jail.
But as they slowly turned around, she wasn’t the one the guy was interested in. Instead, he motioned to Paula with a crook of his finger. With a wide-eyed expression of controlled panic, she took a wary step or two back toward the booth. The guy leaned out the window, his eyes narrow and intense.
“Where did you get that marvelous hat?”
Paula stood there frozen, her mouth hanging open. Renee came up beside her and gave her a nudge.
“Uh…the thrift store down on Market Street.”
“Damn! Then it’s one of a kind!”
“Afraid so.”
He shook his head. “The great stuff always is.” He gave them a big smile. “You’re lucky you’re here a little early so you get a good table. Enjoy the show.”
Renee literally had to drag Paula by the arm to a table along one wall, where they had a good view of the entire room. The place was already in motion, with the most colorful assortment of gender-benders roaming around that Renee had ever seen. Up front was a large stage draped with a thick maroon curtain. The music throbbed as multicolored lights swarmed around the room, and so much cigarette smoke hung in the air that breathing was a chore. A cocktail server came immediately to their table and took their drink order.
Paula’s face was still ashen. “I’ve never felt so out of place in my entire life.”
“Are you kidding? I hear that hat you’re wearing is marvelous.”
Paula frowned. “I get a compliment, and who does it come from? A man wearing hoop earrings and a blue-sequined dress.”
“Which means you fit right in. Just be cool, okay?” Renee dropped her shades down her nose a bit and furtively scanning the club. “And stay on the lookout. If you see anything suspicious, we’ll take a closer look.
John sat on his sofa, the television turned on but muted, staring ahead at nothing. He missed Renee. God, how he missed her. Compounding that was the guilt that had been eating away at him since the moment he’d left her at that tacky motel last night and watched her walk away. He hoped she took his advice and ran far and fast, because the very thought that she could end up behind bars amid the scum of the earth was just about more than he could tolerate.
He remembered the look on her face as she’d stepped out of his car—that lost, lonely expression that said she’d trusted him to help her, and he’d let her down. Now she was going to spend the rest of her life wishing she’d never laid eyes on him.
He checked his watch. Eight thirty.
The talent show started in thirty minutes. It was possible that the person who committed that robbery would be a part of the crowd, the person who’d either accidentally or deliberately framed Renee and was going to walk away a free man.
But maybe they’d been 100 percent wrong, and the robber was some anonymous person he’d never hope to find in a million years. After all, how many crimes in this town went unsolved every year? This was probably going to be one more.
He tossed the remote down to the coffee table and rested his head against the back of the sofa. He’d done the right thing by making her leave. He knew he had. So why did it feel so wrong?
Then he heard a hard, rapid knock on his door that sounded like machine-gun fire.
Alex.
John stayed on the sofa for a moment, willing him to go away, only to hear another knock, this one more intense than the last. And he would continue knocking until John let him in.
He finally got up and opened the door. Alex stepped inside, glanced around the room, then looked back at John.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“You took her in, right?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know where she is.”
Alex glared at him accusingly. “You let her go?”
“Yes. I let her go. She was innocent.”
“You don’t know that for sure. And even if you did, it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference!”
“Christ, Alex, she was going to spend years in prison for something she didn’t do! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Alex pointed a stern finger. “Once you start down this path, there’s no going back.”
“What path?”
“The one where you think you’re above the law. The one where you start second-guessing everything instead of doing your job.”
“Don’t you understand? I knew what was going to happen to her if I took her in. You know as well as I do that the system doesn’t always get it right!”
“You’re not listening to me,” Alex said. “I know what she was like back then. They never change. Never. If she gets thrown in jail, believe me, there’s a good reason for it.”
How could Alex know that? How could he know that a woman like Renee couldn’t decide to make a better life for herself?
Alex huffed with disgust. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that you’ve made a fool out of yourself over a woman like her.”
A woman like her.
John felt a sharp burn of anger start in the back of his throat and spread through him like wildfire. Suddenly it struck him that Alex didn’t know a thing about Renee. He knew about some girl who existed eight years ago, who’d just as soon spit in a cop’s eye as look at him. But that girl was gone. The woman he wanted to protect was someone else entirely.
Someone he was in love with.
He’d felt it last night when she’d gotten out of his car at that motel, but he’d instantly shoved it aside, guarding his heart against the possibility that he could have fallen in love with a woman he’d never see again. But now the truth leaped into his mind with such force and such clarity that he couldn’t help but acknowledge it.
He was in love with Renee.
But how could that be? The situation was too crazy. He barely knew her.
But was that really true? The pressure she’d been under these past few days had revealed more about her than if they’d known each other for years. She’d faced her biggest fear and had trusted him to help her through it.
Yes. She’d trusted him to help her, and he’d turned his back on her. How could he have done such a thing?
Because he was afraid of screwing up his career, afraid of what Alex thought, afraid of what his family would think. Hell, he’d even been afraid of what his dead father was thinking as he stared down at him from heaven. How foolish could he possibly have been?
All this time he’d been berating himself for his failure to become the man his father thought he ought to be, for his inability to reach that place in his life where he could finally do that one thing to make his old man proud.
Then Renee had come along, and in just a few days he’d finally understood something that had eluded him for as long as he could remember. He didn’t need his father’s approval. He needed to live according to his own rules and not give a damn what his father thought.
As of right then, he didn’t.
He felt a surge of energy, accompanied by a sudden, overwhelming need to right the wrongs that his misconceptions had caused. He could feel his brother gearing up to berate him some more, but all he could think about was Renee. Right now he was the only thing standing between her and either a life on the run or a prison sentence.
He knew what he had to do. He had to get to that club.
He turned to his brother. “I did something really stupid last night, Alex.”
“Damn right you did.”
“I didn’t throw you out of my house when I had the chance.”
Leaving Alex standing there with his mouth hanging open, John went into his bedroom and grabbed his gun from his closet and his cuffs from the dresser. He stuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, then returned to the living room and grabbed his coat from the front closet. He put it on, then stuffed the handcuffs into his pocket.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Alex asked.
“Aunt Charlie’s. Renee is innocent. And I’m going to prove it.”
He started toward the door. To his surprise, Alex stepped in front of him. “You’re not going anywhere.”
John blinked. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re not stepping foot out of this house.”
Alex folded his arms over his chest, his legs spread wide, like a bouncer in a particularly badass bar. John couldn’t believe it. Did his brother mean to physically stop him?
“Get out of my way, Alex.”
“If you want out that door, you’re going to have to go through me first.”
John had expected Alex to be belligerent and unreasonable. He’d been that way ever since they were kids, lording his superior size and strength over his brothers every chance he got. But John had never expected this.
As tall and muscular as John was, Alex was taller, and he outweighed him by at least twenty pounds. For all his talk about throwing his brother out of his house, in a bare-knuckles brawl, John knew there was a strong possibility that he could come out on the losing end.
Time was short. He had to get to that club, but his brother was not one to make idle threats. If John decided to leave, Alex would be all over him.
“So you think you can take me, huh?” John said.
Alex scoffed. “With one hand tied behind my back.”
“Bullshit. You’d be lucky to bench-press three hundred.”
“Kid, I was bench-pressing three hundred while you were still in diapers.”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“If you can do ten reps at three hundred, I won’t leave the house. Deal?”
Alex smiled. “Your negotiating skills stink. I can do ten reps at three hundred in my sleep, and you know it.”
“Then how about you get in here and show me?”
John started toward his spare room, where his exercise equipment resided. Alex paused only a moment before striding after him, his intensely competitive nature allowing him to do nothing else.
John slid a hundred and fifty pounds on either side of the bar. Alex gave him a snide look and added ten more to each side. He lay down on the bench, and John watched in awe as Alex lifted the weight as if it were a bagful of feathers. He knew his brother was pretty powerful, but any minute he expected him to start twirling the barbell like a baton.
Good thing John hadn’t expected to win this battle with brawn.
He slipped the handcuffs out of his pocket, and as Alex raised the bar to full extension, he clamped one of them around his left wrist. Alex caught on instantaneously, but he was holding a three-hundred-pound barbell, and in the time it took him to return it to its resting place, John had slapped the other cuff around the bench.
Alex dropped the barbell with a clatter and lunged for John. John managed to sidestep him, getting out of the way just as Alex hit the end of the cuff. His brother glared at him with a look of unbridled fury that said that if he ever got loose, John was a dead man.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted, his voice thundering through the room. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought I made that clear. I’m going to that club.”
Alex started after John, dragging the weight bench after him with surprising speed, its legs making a hideous scraping noise across the hardwood floor. John managed to make it out the door with Alex only inches behind him. Then the weight bench hit the door with a clatter, too wide by a few inches to clear the space, and Alex hit the end of the cuff with a loud curse.
“John! Get back here! You get your ass back here and get me out of these cuffs! Now!”
“Sorry, Alex. I have things to do.”
“Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you when I get my hands on you?” Alex shouted.
Oh, John knew. Thank God for plastic surgery and dental reconstruction. After six months or so of recuperation, he might actually resemble a human being again.
Alex was still screaming at him as he went out to the garage, but that didn’t sway him from his mission. He had to get to that club, find the real culprit, then find a way to bring Renee back home to him again.
“The show’s getting ready to start,” Paula said. “This really ought to be something.”
Renee couldn’t have cared less about the show, except that the standing-room-only crowd gave her a lot more suspects. But pretty soon all the people kind of melted together into a sea of cosmetic excess, big hair, and plus-size glitz, and she was having a hard time sifting through it all.
The lights dimmed. Renee heard a drumroll, then a crescendo of introductory music. The emcee slithered onto the stage in a short, black, barely there dress, fishnet stockings, and a long black wig, introducing himself as Samantha. If Sonny Bono had come back from the dead, walked out from the other side of the stage and met him in the middle, the look would have been complete.
“Uh-oh,” Paula said.
Renee whipped around. “What?”
“We’re in trouble now.” She pointed toward the DJ booth. “Steve’s here!”
Renee blinked with disbelief. Paula was right. Steve was in the DJ booth, taking care of the music for the evening.
Damn. Of all the nights for Steve to be working at one of these clubs, why did it have to be tonight? Why couldn’t he be gambling his paycheck away instead of earning one?
Paula whipped back around. “I can’t let Steve see me! He’ll tell Tom!”
“I don’t want him to see either of us,” Renee said. “Just take it easy. He obviously hasn’t seen us so far, and now that he’s busy, he won’t notice us.”
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Paula said, taking a big swig of her wine spritzer. “A very bad idea.”
Renee spent the next half hour scanning the crowd. Once she thought she saw somebody wearing a leopard print, so she got up to take a better look. But before she could get to the guy’s table, he headed toward the hall that led to the bathroom. She ripped off her sunglasses and followed him, but halfway there she realized it wasn’t a leopard print at all—just a lot of gold spangles on a black background.
Disappointed, she turned to go back to their table, at the same time glancing toward the DJ booth. For a moment she thought Steve’s gaze had met hers. She shoved her sunglasses back on and turned away, scurrying through the crowd and sitting back down at their table. When she finally gathered the nerve to turn back, she saw that Steve’s attention appeared to be on his job and not on her. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Any luck?” Paula asked her when she returned.
“No. It wasn’t a leopard print after all. I thought for a minute that Steve saw me, though, but he’s not looking this way. I think we’re in the clear.”
“Are you sure?” Paula asked.
Renee looked back toward the DJ booth, suppressing a gasp when she saw Steve lay down his headphones and step out the door. But instead of walking toward them, he trotted back toward the hall, probably taking a quick bathroom break before the performer onstage finished his act.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“Okay. Good.” Paula let out a sigh of relief and took another sip of her drink. “You know, this is actually a pretty good show.”
Renee wondered if the wine spritzer had gone to Paula’s head. Which act had she enjoyed the most? The ballet number with the guy in the pink tutu, or the guy who stuck a pillow under his dress and sang, “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No”?
The more Paula relaxed, the more uptight Renee became. As act after act came and went, she started to realize that nobody here was wearing anything like what the man had worn to commit that robbery. Not even close.
If it had even been a man at all.
Hopelessness slowly crept in, and soon the futility of what they were doing here tonight became clear. It had been sheer speculation that the robber was a man, speculation based on what a crazy old lady had told John about what she saw that night.
John had been right. They’d been dreaming. She’d been foolish even to think of coming here, because even if she did find somebody wearing something suspicious, what was she going to do? Walk right up and accuse him of armed robbery? She could find out his identity, but then what? Without John to help her, how was she going to investigate any further?
The only thing she’d accomplished that evening was to risk being seen by somebody she knew, a danger even greater now that Steve was there. And she’d dragged Paula into the situation right along with her.
She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t sit there in this strange place any longer hoping for the impossible.
She leaned toward Paula. “The show’s almost over. Let’s go.”
“But you haven’t found who you’re looking for!”
“And I’m not going to, either. I was crazy to think I could. Can we just go? Please?”
Paula sighed. “Okay. If you say so.”
Renee tossed money on the table, and they walked away amid a flurry of applause for the previous act. The emcee announced the next contestant. Renee glanced back to see a performer coming to the stage looking a bit uncomfortable, wearing a short dark wig, snug blue pants, and an oversize blue silk top. He sat down on a stool in the middle of the stage, microphone in hand. Even at this distance, Renee could see that the crowd was in for a Judy Garland imitation, which was probably going to make poor Judy turn over in her grave.
Renee glanced toward the DJ booth. Steve’s attention was on the show, making it easy for them to slip out the door unnoticed. She wanted to go back to that ugly but quiet little motel room, feed herself a dose of reality, and plan her escape. By this time tomorrow, she needed to be well on her way to somewhere else.
Then the music started, and the performer onstage began to sing. Softly. Mournfully. A beautiful rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a voice not that different from Judy Garland’s.
“Oh!” Paula said, turning back. “I love that song!”
“Paula, please. Let’s get out of here!”
But Paula stopped. Stared.
“Paula. Will you come on?”
“Renee?”
“What?”
Paula pointed toward the stage. “Did you see his earrings?” It was a long way up to the stage, but still Renee could see large earrings dangling from the guy’s ears. Large, multicolored earrings. She whipped off her sunglasses.
Multicolored earrings? “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” Could it be?
She started back toward the stage, pushing her way through the crowd. She got jostled back and forth and almost fell off her four-inch heels, but finally she managed to get within several feet of the stage. She could go no farther. The crowd at the edge of the stage was like a solid wall of beads, sequins, satin, and lace, and she just couldn’t squeeze her way through. She kept leaning right and left to see around people’s heads, trying to make out the shape of the performer’s earrings. She thought maybe they looked like rainbows, but she couldn’t be sure.
Glancing to her right, she saw four steps leading up to a curtain, which looked as if it led backstage. If she hurried, she could catch the guy coming offstage and get a really good look. She inched her way around a redhead in a purple beaded gown and started toward the steps.
And ran right into John.
He caught her by the shoulders. She stared up at him with total shock. A heartbeat later recognition lit his eyes. “Renee?”
He’s here to arrest me.
It was the first thought that entered her mind. Suddenly she was sure that Alex had convinced him that he shouldn’t have let her go. John had checked her motel room, found her gone, then decided she might have come here. And now he was going to take her to jail, just as he thought he should have done in the first place—
“The earrings!” he shouted to her over the roar of the crowd. “That man onstage! I think those are the earrings!”
Renee almost collapsed with relief. He’d been looking for the culprit, just as she had, and he’d seen the earrings, too. He wasn’t there to arrest her—he was there to help her.
Judy Garland was wrapping up his performance, sliding up to that high note at the end of the song and holding it while the crowd went crazy with applause. John grabbed Renee’s hand and wove through the crowd, then ran up the steps that led to the backstage area. He swept the curtain aside. Renee saw Judy Garland coming off the stage, accepting congratulations on his performance from another contestant.
John strode over, spun the guy around, and backed him up against a wall. He yanked one of the clip earrings off his ear.
“Hey!” the guy shouted. “What are you doing?”
John held up the earring, and Renee’s heart slammed against her chest. It was a rainbow. No doubt about it. Just as the old lady at the convenience store had described.
Renee was sure this was the guy who’d committed the robbery. She didn’t know what it was going to take to prove it, but she knew for a fact that they had their man.
Then he turned and met her eyes.
Renee stopped suddenly, sensing something familiar about that heavily made-up face. She stepped closer to get a better look, and when she realized who was behind those false eyelashes and that ruby-red lipstick, her jaw dropped so far it practically hit the floor.
“Tom?”