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hurry right now, Liz. We’re running late and Frank likes dinner to be ready when he gets home. I’ll tell you what, just throw it into your dryer and run it over whenever you have a chance, okay?”
    “Sure,” Elizabeth says reluctantly, following Pamela to the door. She watches as her neighbor hurries down the driveway and across her own front yard, still carrying both of her children.
    Then she carefully double-bolts and chains her door again, and goes around closing the blinds and curtains. When she gets to the kitchen, she spies her grape-juice-soaked mail still in the sink.
    She spreads a layer of paper towels on the table, then carries the wet, sticky pile over and sets it down. She sits cross-legged on a chair and starts going through it.
    Since she hasn’t been to the post office since late last week, there’s quite a bit of mail. Some of it is junk, most of it bills, and a few catalogues and magazines.
    An envelope catches her eye as she crumples a supermarket flyer into a ball.
    A pink envelope, poking out from beneath her phone bill.
    She frowns and pulls it out. It’s square and stiff; the kind of envelope that might contain a greeting card.
    Her name and post office box address are typed neatly on the outside.
    There’s no return address.
    But the postmark is Windmere Cove.
    For a moment Elizabeth only stares at it, her hands trembling.
    It’s probably just more junk mail , she tells herself. It looks like a card and there’s no return address, so they can get people to open it out of curiosity .
    Slowly, she slides her index finger beneath the flap and starts to rip the envelope open. The stiff edge catches her flesh, and she winces.
    “Just a paper cut,” she says aloud, sticking her finger into her mouth and sucking the metallic-tasting blood away before opening the envelope the rest of the way.
    She pulls out a greeting card.
    On the front is a photo of a teddy bear with a sad face.
    Inside, a scrawled message reads, I know who you are .
    The card is unsigned.
    Elizabeth’s heart is pounding. Shaking her head in disbelief, she tosses the card onto the table and backs away from it.
    I know who you are .
    There’s only one person who could have sent it.
    Unless it’s some kind of joke,
    “It has to be,” Elizabeth whispers. “It’s a joke, or a mistake.... It can’t be …”
    It can’t be him .

Chapter
2
    E lizabeth bends to smooth the mauve duvet cover and tuck it beneath the pillows, then winces. She twists to rub the burning spot between her shoulder blades, a telltale remnant of her sleepless night. The few times she had managed to doze off, nightmares had tormented her.
    She had been hurtled back to another August night, to the sprawling rented mansion high on the cliffs above the beach at Malibu, to the vast king-sized bed in the master bedroom there. The hot, dry Santa Anas stirred the filmy white draperies on the floor-to-ceiling windows and set the wind chimes on the stone terrace to an eerie, mournful tolling.
    And there, beyond the landscaped pool area, a dark silhouette crept toward her, moving stealthily through the shadows.
    In that impossibly convenient manner of dreams, she could see the figure clearly though she was inside the house, in bed, tossing in a restless sleep. She sensed that danger was closing in; she knew that in a matter of moments, she would be dead....
    No!
    Stop thinking of that. It was only a dream....
    Only a nightmare .
    Elizabeth lets out a shuddering sigh and abruptly shoves the quilt beneath the edges of the pillow shams. She turns and surveys the room, not reassured by its sun-splashed order or by the faint strains of an old Billy Joel song playing on the easy-listening radio station in the next room.
    The day Janet Kravinski had first shown Elizabeth this house, she had pointed out how spacious the master bedroom was, how bright with “all those windows”—three-paned, high rectangles overlooking the asphalt driveway and chain-link-fenced