Arms still crossed, Lindsay's clogs tapped on the sidewalk. __o Sam didn__ tell you I was a desperate orphan child with no life outside of work? This isn__ some kind of intervention, some kind of lame attempt to cheer me up?_ He grinned.__hy would she do that?_ __ecause that__ how it sounded._ Nudging her shoulder, he grinning down at her. __ou don__ look desperate, Dr. Lindsay, not by a long shot." __hat__ because you don__ know me._ Lindsay bit her lower lip, arms still crossed, clogs still tap-tap-tapping. Her chest heaved. __y parent__ died in a car accident almost two years ago. It__ a difficult thing to get over. I__ still not exactly right. I guess she worries about me._ Ty sucked in his breath, thinking fast. ____ really sorry about your parents, Linds._ As he put an arm around her shoulder, she broke into a self-conscious smile and shook her head. __pend any time with me at all and you__l find that Sam__ right. I__ a desperate orphan child, completely paranoid and irrepressibly horny._ __hoa!_ She looked so cute, but vulnerable, too. He closed the arm around her shoulder, squeezing her sideways to his chest. Embarrassed, she smiled as she elbowed his rib. Then she dropped her arms and stayed put, tucked close against him. It felt right, having her there.

Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.

If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself_ and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.

I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.

LIfe is just a game of chance, a dance with fate if you let it be so. Or you could chose to play by your rules to win.

The trigger has been squeezed, the deathly mechanism has been enabled, the fatal course of a bullet has been set. No amount of bleating or praying or wailing of cajoling can halt it or stall it or call it back.