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away.
    â€œRoxanne,” Mason said, the effort to remain calm obvious in his voice. “It’s not some game we’re playing here. It’s
not
a joke.”
    Stop saying that. If it’s not a joke or a game . . . what is it?
    My knees gave out and I slid to the floor, holding my breath while I carefully leaned in and pressed my ear against the door. I huddled in a ball of quivering flesh and bone while Mason called my name a couple more times until someone across the way opened a door and told him to shut the hell up. Mason swore and mumbled something, and the door vibrated as if he’d stepped closer.
    I held still. Something metal scraped against the wood. Some kind of tool? His gun? Or maybe nothing more than a zipper.
    â€œYou’re going to have to open this door at some point, Rox,” he said quietly. “You know you want to.”
    I did want to. Part of me, at least. Mason had always lived a big, bold life, whether he was simply giving himself the run of my apartment or making big, blowsy plans for himself and my roommate Louise. When I wasn’t busy envying her for it, I guess I was busy admiring him. He was too thick to see it—or at least I hoped he was. Otherwise, I’d be as mortified now as I was terrified. The thing was, it didn’t really surprise me that he was running around town in some kind of lethal skirmish with an Englishman ripped out of one of the spy novels I loved to read; what surprised me was that I was suddenly running around with him.
    A soft thump reverberated against the door, and I could imagine Mason’s palms right up against mine on the other side. Breathlessly, I stared at my hands, slowly splaying my fingers as I knelt on the ground.
    What do you want from me?
I wondered.
    â€œI’m going to back off, okay? Give you a chance to settle. Leo’s gotta go deal with that arm and . . . stuff . . . so I don’t want you to worry. I’ll come back tomorrow,” Mason said. His voice was low and level. He knew I was right there. He knew I was close enough to hear, and his words were strangely intimate, divided and huddled though we were.
    â€œYou’re going to have to open your mind, Roxanne,” he finally said, and then he struck the door hard as he stood up.
    I flinched, my heart pounding. But there wasn’t anything more, nothing besides the sound of footstepsfading. I stumbled to my feet and fled upstairs, barricading myself in my bedroom with a chair that I knew couldn’t possibly do any good.
    No, I didn’t understand what the hell had just happened. I didn’t have a clue what Mason Merrick was trying to pull off or what his motives could possibly be; I’d cut him off at every pass. Now he’d left me alone, as I’d asked him to, and it was a solitary confinement with which I was all too familiar.
    Open my mind, open the door
, he’d said. I’d be a liar if I denied that part of me was glad he was coming back.

THREE
    I remember flipping through the phonebook for the nonemergency police line and getting a busy signal. I remember hanging up and not bothering to try again. I remember getting under the covers with my clothes on and wrapping myself in the enormous down comforter spilling over the sides of my bed.
    I would have expected that night to be a sleepless one, but it wasn’t. I slept deeply, easily, and when I awoke the next morning, I had the weirdest desire to do that
seize the day
thing everyone’s always talking about.
    I shed last night’s clothes all over the hall where I’d left my tennis shoes, and headed for the room I used as my office to check my schedule. The room was pitch-black, with no windows to provide any light from the outside world. I ran my palm over the inside wall and flipped the switch, but the single bulb made a pretty sorry difference.
    I turned my computer on and scanned the office while waiting for the