“It’ll be easy. No one will worry about a girl your age in a school uniform. They’ll think you’re some private-school snob wandering around after curfew.”

“What if I get caught?”

“You’re not going to get caught. It’ll take two hours. You’ll be in bed by morning.”

“No way. This is crazy. Take me home.” Eleanor shook her head and fought off a wave of nausea. Yeah, she knew how to steal a car. She’d known as long as she could remember. This way to bend the hanger. This wire to that wire. But that was a game she played in her dad’s garage in Queens, something to do to impress her dad and the guys he worked with. Look at me, I can do it faster than you. They’d pat her on her head, applaud, tell her she needed to work for them instead of wasting her time in school. Those were jokes, funny cracks, playtime.

“Honey. I need your help here. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t life and death.”

Life and death. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the visions of her father lying in casket that danced through her head. Casket? Probably not. If he didn’t pay off the mob, there wouldn’t be enough left of him for a casket.

“Don’t call me honey.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the city. Friday night in Manhattan, all the money had come out to play. Up ahead on the left Eleanor spotted a black Jaguar trying to parallel park in front of a bar.

“Elle—” her father began but she didn’t let him finish.

“How many?”

He shrugged. “Five?”

“Five. Fine. I’ll see you at the shop.” She opened the door and slammed it behind her.

Five cars. Home by dawn. No one would suspect her.

Eleanor walked down the sidewalk, not taking her eyes off the Jag. Finally the driver managed to worm the car into the spot. He opened the driver’s side door and Eleanor stood on the passenger side.

“Sir, I think you hit that car behind you,” she said over the roof.

“What?” He barely glanced at her. “No way.”

“Looks like it to me. Check the bumper.”

The driver, who looked half-drunk already, stumbled to the rear of the car and bent over.

“Nah, it’s good. You scared me there.” He pointed at her over the trunk and smiled.

“No problem. My mistake.”

He walked into the bar, barely giving her a second look. He didn’t seem to notice that while he’d examined the rear bumper, she’d unlatched the passenger side door. When she was certain no one on the street was paying her any attention, she dropped into the car and shut the door behind her.

Seconds later, she was on her way to Queens.

She’d snagged the Jag so fast she beat her father back to the garage.

Sitting on the hood of the car, she watched the shop at work. They’d known her since she was a baby; Jimmie, Jake, Levon and Kev had entertained her with card tricks and jokes and let her watch them working under the hoods of the cars anytime she’d come around. Now they barely glanced at her. In fact, in the past year whenever she’d stopped by they all treated her like a stranger.

“Nice Jag,” Oz, the oldest guy on her dad’s crew, said as he shuffled past her. He had so much grease and oil on his overalls she couldn’t tell what color they were supposed to be. “Yours?”

“Mine. I’m keeping it.”

“You got good taste, kiddo.”

“In cars only. I suck at picking parents.”

Oz raised his hands. “You know he wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t desperate.”

“How desperate?”

Oz glanced around. He looked back at her and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Told me five hundred.”

Eleanor couldn’t wrap her mind around the number.

“Five hundred … thousand?”

Oz nodded. “Had to borrow to pay off an old debt. Swapped an old debt for a new one.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Eleanor sighed. Someone had loaned her dad five hundred thousand dollars? Wonder what he’d spent it on. She’d gotten nothing for Christmas from him.

Oz patted her knee and started to shuffle away again.

“Hey, Oz?”

“Yeah, toots?”

“Do Kev and Jake hate me for some reason?” Even now Kev and Jake eyed her from their various posts. Both of them were in their mid-twenties, her dad’s two best guys.

Oz burst into peals of big-bellied laughter.

“Hate you, toots? Hell, no.”

“Then what’s their problem?”

“They don’t wanna piss off your papa by getting caught staring at his baby. You’re getting too pretty for your own good. Stop that, now. And get rid of those pigtails. That only makes it worse.” He slapped the side of her leg in a fatherly sort of way and headed back to work. Eleanor couldn’t believe these guys she’d known since she was a tiny seven-year-old, and they were zit-faced teenagers, now couldn’t even talk to her because she had boobs. She yanked her ponytail holders out of her hair.

Eleanor glanced around the garage while she waited. Bad night. Everybody working like demons. She’d never seen the garage looking so dismal or so frenzied. A great furnace boiled with flames in one corner casting heat but no light. The whole place smelled of smoke and sulfur. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.

Finally her father pulled in the back entrance and got out of the Camry.