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BAD TWIN - CHAPTER 1


Excerpted from BAD TWIN by Gary Troup. Copyright © 2006 Gary Troup. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold.

1

   She moved to the service line. He gently snapped open the phone. She bounced the ball in front of her, once, twice, three times. With a practiced lack of hurry, Artisan raised the phone toward his ear but then subtly shifted it in front of his face and focused it on Sally Handler.
   With her left hand she tossed the ball a few feet above her head. Her right arm lifted, dropped into a backswing, then came up high above her visor and her hairdo to strike the yellow ball. Artisan snapped the picture at the moment of contact.
   And that was it. That was the end of Artisan’s workday and it was the end of Sally Handler’s fraudulent five-million-dollar suit against her orthopedic surgeon. She’d had her rotator cuff ’scoped just under a year ago. Her suit alleged that the doctor had screwed up and she could no longer raise her arm beyond the level of her shoulder. Did she really expect not to be found out? Artisan would now send the photo to the orthopedist’s insurance company. The company, most likely, would forward the image to Sally Handler’s lawyer with a terse note saying they were not inclined to settle and would gladly meet her in court. Sally Handler would drop her case and Artisan would receive his day rate of five hundred bucks from the insurance company.
   The detective slid the phone back into his pocket and secured the zipper of his tennis bag. He hoped to slip away without a confrontation, and he more or less succeeded. As he rose from the bleachers, Sally Handler’s gaze locked onto him and irresistibly drew his glance in return. Their eyes locked only for an instant of mutually abashed communication. Sally Handler’s eyes told him she knew that she’d been photographed; that she didn’t want her tennis-lady friends to know what she had done. Artisan’s eyes sent back the lame message that it was nothing personal.
   Then he walked away. It was just after ten thirty when he got back to the front desk. He actually had time to take the lesson he had booked. But he didn’t feel like it. He felt bad for Sally Handler. He felt bad, also, for himself. He paid for the lesson and he left the club.



Bad Twin - now part of the LOST universe.