The room spun around him as he lurched to the bottom of the staircase. He swore it had been straight the last time he had been here, now it spiraled upwards, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

With one hand he gripped the banister, the other held his side, failing to stem the flow of oozing blood. Dammit, this never happened to Bogie in the movies, bullets always managed to miss him. Just my luck, he thought, my dirty rotten luck.

If only he had been out the day she first darkened his office door. He could have been outside, enjoying the sunshine like the rest of California, strolling along Venice Beach, looking at any number of beautiful woman. Instead he was stuck with this one, the platinum blonde he would have run through walls to save.

Was it her dazzling looks that had made him blind? Would he have believed her cockamamie story of she had been a three hundred pound cross-eyed gent with a limp and bad body odour? He had always been a sucker for a blonde.

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