She didn’t know why she bothered to carry her cell phone, it wasn’t as if anyone bothered to call her. New in town, she didn’t have many friends or connections yet and her family had all scattered to the wind years ago with no forwarding address. Still, she carried it to ward off the emergencies that one heard on the news that cellphones warded off, such as being buried by a avalanche or lost on a back country road. When it rang, she almost didn’t hear it, so used to it being someone elses and not hers that she didn’t even think to look until the woman next to her said “Honey, you gonna answer that?” she looked at her confused for a moment and then realized that the phone ringing was indeed her’s. She scavenged through her purse and eventually found the still ringing phone and answered it.

“Hello?” she asked puzzled.

“Yes, is this Miss Isabelle Browning?” she made a face at the use of her full name. She’d always hated it, but her mother had loved the writer and when she’d actually married a man with the last name of Browning, she simply couldn’t resist. Her mother had been the only person to use her full first name, but she had died five years ago, and since then, she’d been Izzy to one and all.

“Ah, yes, who is this?” curious as to who would dare to use the name only her mother got to use and vaguely furious that someone would dare.

“Miss Isabelle Browning, daughter of Alan and Elizabeth Browning?”

Now Izzy felt nervous, she didn’t like being at the disadvantage to this voice at the other end of the line and she deliberately forced herself to remain calm when answering. “Possibly, but since I don’t know who you are and what you want I’m not certain I should answer the question.”

“Yes, very smart,” the voice answered back, “I’m sorry to be so criptic. My name is Lawrence DiCamillo and I represent the estate of a recently deceased gentleman who left something in his will to the daughter of Alan and Elizabeth Browning. It took a bit of effort to locate you, but we believe that you are that person and we need to get you out here to discuss how you would like your behest distributed. To do this we need to establish a bit of information in order to make sure that we actually have the correct person. Now if you could answer a few questions?” He began but didn’t get to finish.

“No.”

“Excuse me?” he answered, a bit put out by her response.

“Not until you give me information on you that I can verify to make sure you are who you say you are. Do that and I’ll call you back and we can discuss whatever it is I suposidly inherited, but not until I know that you are on the up and up.” Lawrence stared into the phone. Frankly he was shocked. He was used to being greated by good will at this calls. His voice generally meant someone had come into money or other sorts of valuable goods. Suspicion didn’t come with his client base, but since nothing about the excution of this will had been easy or expected, he wondered if he shouldn’t have expected this. Still, he gave the woman’s voice at the other end of the phone his state of licenture and the name of his firm, DiCamillo, Hawkins, and Villabose in Houston, Texas. He wasn’t sure exactly what information she should come up with that would reassure her, but she sounded competitent that she could get the story on him, so he let her go to work and waited for her to call back. While he waited, he wondered at the turn of events that had placed him in such an akward position.

Lawrence Dicamillo was not the sort of person to be called Larry. He was partially raised in England and retained that sort of stickler for detail in all interactions that the merry breed were famous for. Although the firm that bore his name was located in Houston, he made his home and pratice and Connenntent, as a full partner he had the luxury of being in the actual office only a few times a year and modern technology insured that he could remain on top of things from the comfort of the den of his house. His father had begun the pratice and although he’d moved with his mother back to her native England when they divorced, he did come back to pass the bar and practice law in Texas. He’d lasted two years when he realized that he and Texas would never be co-pasetic. During his excursion back, he had grown to enjoy parts of the city, but knew that limited contact between him and Houston would be mutually beneficial to both of them.

The firm dealt mostly with estates and wills. Generally this sort of law was straight forward, and Lawrence worked hard to ensure that the way his clients wanted to divide their worldly assets be honored. Seldom were his wills contested and when they were almost always they held. He figured that this was why Gerrard Leo had choosen his firm. The elderly gentleman had been refered by an established and well off client who changed his will every five years to make room for his ever growing brood of grandchildren. At first, the old man’s behests seemed to be an easily governed estate. Unlike so many other clients, Gerrard was a widow without children. He left his estate to his only remaining relative, an Isabelle Anne Browning, his great-neice. Simple and straight forward, at least that was how it appared at first. He done all the appropriate actions, check out to see if the gentleman was who he said and if his mental health was in order. The story he’d told had been confirmed with research, but when he died only a month later all hell broke loose. Six different person’s had come forward claiming to be related to the late Mr. Leo. Four of these had been dismissed quickly through investigating, but two were still pending and although there wasn’t any proof that they were any more entitled to the estate then the other four, they were better funded. That confused him as well. He estate certainly couldn’t be worth over half a million, pocket change to both of the protesting parties. Something the old man possessed was worth whatever time and lawyers fees they shelled out. Now the reaction of the woman who actually deserved the lot of Mr. Leo’s possessions confused him as well.

That evening he looked over the information the investigator he’d hired to find her had produced. First, he looked at her picture. She was twenty-six, with short blond hair and greenish eyes that were piercing. She would have been powerful in a courtroom with her short stature, only five feet and wholesome good looks, she would have lulled the witness into a position of comfort until she choose to pounce. He looked over her personal history they compiled. Librarian as profession, and a beloved one just moved to Colorado at Denver Public Library only two months ago. Well, she just might have all the necessairy means at her disposal to make her check on him complete. She didn’t have a romantic connection currently after breaking up with a boyfriend, on Jake Jankowitz, almost a year before. Currently, she seemed to him to be someone making a fresh start in a new city. Well, he mused, she would have help in that department when she collected her inheritance. Still, nothing in her background merited the sort of response the he had garnered when he’d called her. He looked closer. No, no incidence of violence or identity thief, two common things that rendered people suspicious to callers over the phone. Something must of caused it, but he figure that she was just a careful sort, woman alone in the world would have to be. He put her out of his mind until she returned his call the next day

His sectary put her through at ten fifiteen the next morning. He found himself inordinately anxious to receive her call. Something had sat funny about the whole situation and her reaction only served to highten his anexity. His father and worked hard to build this pratice, and she wiggled a feather that pricked his intuition that this could threaten his partrace and his good name. Of course, he worried about her as well, but in a vague sort of way, but for a man who put no stock on vibes or intuition, this whole things made in unusually uneasy. He felt relieved when she returned his call in a cautious but curious tone. He relaxed, about her at least. She didn’t want to make trouble, she was just careful. If he only knew how careful.

After she hung up on the lawyer, Isabelle sat at the counter confused. Who would have left her anything. She didn’t have any close family and her two best friends had married each other and were currently on their honeymoon. Not that she wasn’t extremely happy for Zach and Nora, and since she had introduced them in the first place, if she wasn’t she had no one to blame but herself. She looked forward to their return from the remote island that Zach had taken his bride to, the one without cell phone access. Still, she would be much happier when they returned home. Espically since they had told her that Zach had accepted the job at Sun technologies and they would be moving to the area in about six months. She wished it was sooner. Althought her rational mind told her it was ridiculous, something very deep in her told her that she was being watched. Nothing conclusive, only the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end, but ever since the incident she’d had as a teenager, she had an alert intiutitive sense of when danger was near.