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Moist night wind swept the skin on her arms and flicked sharp points of hair into her eyes. Pulling her sweatshirt tight against the gusts, Nikki tucked her hair inside the hood and splashed the oars into the deep black water of Lake Tahoe. A hundred years ago, under the same crescent moon, a Washoe Indian in a kayak would have known how to dip the oars silently, secretly, but no matter how she tipped them, they sucked water into the air, leaving behind a trail of sound.

Silvery snow tipped the mountain peaks that circled like clouds around the lake. She stayed close enough to the shoreline--flat black trees against a glinting navy sky--to track her progress, but far enough out to remain unidentifiable by anyone nosy enough to observe her. She could not be caught, because tonight . . .

Tonight, she was going on a raid! And for the first time, she was going alone. She felt high with the strength of her arms and the tautness of her legs as she rowed, as high as she had felt on New Year's Eve when her mom had let her drink champagne, so even though she didn't like being out here all alone, floating above a deep, dark immensity she didn't want to think about, she wasn't about to turn back.

Scott would have come with her if she had told him about it, but tonight--tonight was personal. She was not just skulking and peeking in windows for a joke, or scrounging a few leftover Heinekens from an outside cooler. Not that she didn't miss having him along. She wouldn't mind a warm body beside her floating into this dark moonlit haze.

As a steady breeze blew over the lake, the water churned, pushing her farther out than she liked. But it wasn't far now.

She knew what she was doing was wrong. But a while back, being bad had stopped feeling bad. Scott had helped with that. So many rules were stupid. He had shown her a whole new way of thinking. You had to make your own way.

Tonight was about making something really wrong right again.

She stretched. Her arms ached. She wasn't used to rowing so much, but then, her original plans for the year hadn't included breaking into someone's house. She hadn't exactly trained for it. She had been forced into it. Three days before, the mail brought a letter addressed to her mother from a law office. That scared her. Her mother wasn't around, so she had opened it. A so-far nice day turned real bad right then. The letter said they were about to be evicted. The landlord wanted his money, and he wanted it right now.

When her mom came home Nikki held the letter in her face, making her read it. "What is this?"

"Don't worry, honey," Daria had said in that drifty way she had. As if everything took care of itself somehow. As if they weren't going to have to pack their things in boxes in about two weeks and go squat in a condemned building. Nikki sat her down, tried to have a practical conversation with her. Where was her last paycheck?

Gone. They had had a lot of back bills to pay.

Not worth screaming about. The bills never got paid until the third notice because they weren't Daria's priority. At least this time she hadn't gotten rooked by some guy who was off to make his mark as an artist or a musician in Vegas.

What about her job? Nikki had asked. Where were the paychecks? Oh, she had lost that job a few weeks ago. She didn't want Nikki to worry and had planned to tell her just as soon as she had another one, which would be any day now.

Nikki had decided. They would resort to the unthinkable. They would borrow money, using Grandpa Logan's land in Nevada for collateral. That was when her mom got nervous and darted around the living room rearranging trinkets.

Finally, Daria had admitted it. She had sold the land to Nikki's uncle Bill for twelve hundred stinkin' dollars.

Forty acres!

Her mom shrugged, saying what was done was done. "That land is in the middle of nowhere and it's basically worthless. He did us a favor."

"Where's the money?" Nikki had asked. Maybe Grandpa's land would perform a heroic rescue. Maybe it would save their home. But no. Her mom had already spent that too paying a few other late bills. The money was gone, just like everything else. Like her dad. Like the security she had once had: that she would have lunch money or new shoes in the fall.

Her mom had never grown up. She trusted everybody, even Uncle Bill. He had never helped them out before and he hadn't helped them out this time. Nikki knew darn good and well that land was worth more than he had paid. All you had to do was to check out the Reno Gazette. Land in Nevada was going up, even scrub desert in the foothills. You couldn't buy land for thirty bucks an acre. You couldn't buy anything for thirty bucks, period. He had taken advantage of her mom's totally inept sense of business.

All of which she had told her mom.

"Oh, honey. Your uncle's a very savvy businessman. Believe me, he knows how much that land is worth."

Duh! He knew, all right, but he was smart enough not to pay it.

Her next thought was, okay, she would talk to him, maybe just ask him to pay a fairer price for Grandpa's acres. But that was dreaming. He couldn't stand her or Daria, because they were poor and he was rich. Sometimes Nikki even thought Uncle Bill was afraid of her, maybe because of her smart mouth.

But they were really in the pits this time, so she thought, we'll ask him for a loan. But anytime she and Daria had been hurting in the past, he had made sure to joke about how stupid it was to loan money to relatives, rubbing his clean surgeon's hands together and watching to make sure they got it.

That made up her mind. She would go to his house, find money, and take it. She had studied the newspaper classifieds. She figured the land was, rock-bottom minimum, worth twice what he paid. She was sure he kept cash around the house. She would take no more than what he should have paid them in the first place. Tomorrow, before he had time to call the police or something dumb like that, she would 'fess up.

Because, let's face it. He owed them.


From the Hardcover edition.