“I… I’m sorry.” He looks at my door again. And me.

I want to, despite the breaking of my composure, pull out my gun right now. This asshole is a worthy subject. But even I, in my manic state, realize the stupidity of that. Morality and eyewitness aside, Simon is too close, I need him. And what I really don’t need is him, and the crack whore behind him, to know that I am psychotic. “Unlock the fucking door,” I grit.

The idiot looks down, at his own doorknob, which rests, unlocked, in his hand. His cheeks flex as he tries to understand. Behind him, the girl starts to laugh, a pig squeal of a sound. I close my eyes and try not to think of death.

I shouldn’t have left.

I shouldn’t have left.

I should have cammed like a good girl, then went to bed. Simon should have locked me in. I want to kill him so badly, it physically pains me.

“Unlock MY apartment,” I growl, pointing with a hand to my door. “NOW.”

“Oh.” He digs in his pocket, moving through the doorway, too close to me. I don’t like the smell of him, don’t like how his stare brushes up my outfit like he can see through it. I step back and wrap my hands around the two items in my pocket.

“You know you’re ringing,” Simon says, smiling as if he is funny, his hand taking too long to pick out the key. I stare at his key ring and wonder if, shoved far enough down his throat, it would choke or kill. “Your cell?” he adds helpfully, as if I don’t know that my cell phone is ringing.

“Unlock my door before I kill you.” The words break out of me in a barely controlled stream of rage.

He squints at me as if deciphering the words, while his right hand turns the lock and the door cracks open. I shove past him, slamming the door the moment my feet enter the sanctuary of my apartment. “Lock it!” I scream, my eye at the peephole.

He looks up and down the hall as my hand closes around the gun. Shakes his head before twisting the key in the opposite direction. I sink to my knees as I hear the tumbler move, my hands pulling out the cell and engaging the call.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m home. I’m locked in.”

“Jesus Christ!” Derek thunders into the phone, the emotion greater than I have ever heard. “Do you have any idea what… what I’ve been picturing?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, my voice unable to reach much further than that. “I’m tired, Derek. I need to sleep.”

“We need to discuss this, Deanna. Where were you when I called?”

“I’m in the apartment, Derek. I’m safe. So is everyone else. I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not good enough—”

“I’m going to bed,” I interrupt. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Promise me.” His tone makes me pause, makes my thumb stop in its journey to the “End Call” button. It is pleading, concerned. I love it.

“I promise,” I mumble. “Tomorrow morning.”

Then I end the call, pull the gun out of my sweatshirt, and crawl, with filthy feet, into bed.

CHAPTER 63

MIKE TENSES WHEN the man stands. He fights the reaction, trying to keep his body relaxed, his hands from shaking, when the man moves toward him, the knife held loosely in his right hand, a flip of his wrist spinning it, letting Mike know in one easy movement that he has held it countless times. Used it. This short, thin man with his dark eyes and soulless smile… he cannot get to Deanna. Yet Mike, made even shorter by his chair, seems to be the only thing standing in this man’s way. The asshole rolls his wrist, then gestures with the knife.

“Let’s move to your computer.”

Stepping back, out of the way enough to allow Mike to wheel, through the living room, into the bedroom, his eyes skipping everywhere as his brain tries to think, tries to work through the best way to pull up the information that shouldn’t be given.

Logging in, he bypasses the mainframe, doing a simple search in the database for Jess Reilly. Jess Reilly’s name in the computer will only bring up the numerous creations that confirm her false identity, all true knowledge housed under her real name. He opens a client file, stealing a piece of paper from the printer and writing the address in clear, neat print. Jess Reilly. P.O. Box 2499. Des Moines, Iowa.

“A P.O. box isn’t worth shit,” the man interjects. “I need a street address.”

“She probably lives in a dorm,” Mike murmurs, turning back to the computer and pulling up Facebook, to the page where he spends a good part of every day.