Excerpt From 'Guilt by Association'

He snapped his cell phone shut and slid it into the pocket of his skintight jeans. The last piece was in place; it wouldn't be long now. But the waiting was agonizing. Unbidden, the memory of his only ride on a roller coaster flooded over him, like a thousand tiny needles piercing his face and body: 8 years old, trapped in that rickety little car with no escape, the feeling of breathtaking terror that mounted as it click-click-clicked its slow, inexorable climb to the top of the sky.

See also: Interview with Marcia Clark.

He shook his head to cleanse his mind of the memory, then abruptly grabbed his long brown hair and pulled it tightly into a ponytail behind his head. He held it there and exhaled again more slowly, trying to quiet his pulse. He couldn't afford to lose it now. With the lift of his arms, his worn T‑shirt rode up, and he absently admired in the little mirror above the dresser the reflection of the coiled snake tattooed on his slim, muscled belly.

He started pacing, the motel carpet crunching under his feet, and found that the action helped. Despite his anxiety, he moved with a loose-hipped grace. Back and forth he walked, considering his plan yet again, looking for flaws. No, he'd set it up just right. It would work. It had to work. He stopped to look around at the dimly lit motel room. "Room" was using the term loosely — it was little more than a box with a bed. His eyes fell on a switch on the wall. Just to have something to do, he went over and flipped it on. Nothing happened. He looked up and saw only a filthy ceiling fan. The sour smell of old cigarettes told him that it hadn't worked in years. There were stains of undetermined origin on the walls that he thought were probably older than he was. The observation amused him. Neither the stains, nor the foul smell of decay, nor the hopeless dead-end feeling of the place fazed him at all. It wasn't that much worse than a lot of the places he'd lived during his 17 years on the planet.

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