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her, maybe, even despite what she had told him.
    She frowned as her thoughts
returned to Brad once more, and made a conscious effort to chase him from her
mind again. Why think of him, when she was in such a nice place? In the
afternoon light, the park was like an ode to spring, every imaginable hue of
green bursting with life, from the pale, tender green of new grass to the
deeper colors of evergreens. She’d tried going to the campus gym and running
there on a treadmill, but she had missed this: nature’s colors, the earthy
smells on the wind, peeks of small animals or birds, the occasional barking of
a dog in the distance.
    Everything changed in the blink of
an eye.
    A streak of silver flashed from
somewhere behind her and hit a cluster of trees. The next thing she knew, a man
was falling from the cover of the trees. He lay still across the trail,
something thin, long, and silver sticking out of his chest. Vivien came to a
dead halt when she realized it was a knife.
    Her eyes grew wide. Her breath
hitched in her throat. She took one step forward toward the man, but stopped
again as someone came out of the same cluster from which he had fallen. The man
was dressed all in black, and he had a knife in each hand. He looked down at
the man on the ground—the man dressed exactly as he was—then back up toward
Vivien. He wasn’t looking at her, however, but at something behind her.
    Her heart hammering in her chest,
Vivien started to look back, only to see someone run from behind her to come
stand between her and the man with the knives. He, too, was dressed all in
black and carried a weapon.
    She gasped when this third man
glanced at her and said urgently, “Run, Vivien!”
    It was Brad.

 
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    Senseless
     
     
     
    In her dream, Vivien had run. Now,
she remained frozen, unable to move as time flashed before her.
    It made no sense.
    None of it did.
    The dead man, still as a rock,
with a knife in his chest, blood soaking into the ground under him. The other
one, his knives twirling and gleaming as he attacked Brad. Brad’s very presence
on this trail when he had had no way of knowing where she would be. The knife
that he, too, handled effortlessly. Or rather, knives. The killing blow had
come from behind her—from where Brad had been. Had it really been Brad, the
same shy man who thought dating her would not be proper, who had killed that
first man? It had to be, since he suddenly pulled the knife out of the dead
man’s chest to better counter his opponent.
    What was going on?
    Vivien wanted to run away, go
home, and escape this madness. Or maybe wake up; this had to be another
dream—another nightmare. The alternative was too outlandish. Yet she remained
there, standing in the middle of the trail, watching sparks fly whenever Brad’s
knives clashed against his opponent’s blades.
    A tiny part of her, the part that
remembered six years of fencing lessons, was in awe of the two men’s technique,
of the speed and agility with which they handled their weapons. Silver flashed
faster than her eyes could follow, but still neither of them seemed to be hurt,
at least not yet. It was bordering on incredible, actually. Who could be that
fast in wielding a weapon—any weapon?
    All of a sudden, a thought struck
Vivien, emerging from the haze of confusion. She had a phone! Why wasn’t she
calling the police already?
    With trembling hands, she fumbled
to unzip her pocket and pulled her phone out. She had time to dial 9-1 before a
strong, cold hand closed over her phone and gently tugged it out of her hands.
She gasped and looked up into Brad’s steely eyes.
    “Please come with me,” he said in
a low voice. “You are not safe here.”
    The second man was nowhere to be
seen.
    She hung on to the phone for a
second, but when she saw the two knives sheathed on either side of Brad’s belt,
the line of blood on his cheek, her mind turned blank, her fingers nerveless.
He pulled the phone out of her hand and made it