There wasn’t any way around it. Grandma’s house—my house, now—was going to have to get cleaned up sometime. And now that it might be several days or more before I could see Jeremy again, I needed something to do to make the time pass.

I shuffled through the wreckage of the kitchen, picking up the larger pieces of broken glass and china and tossing them into a garbage bag. The police had already come through and completed their investigation of the scene. Now it was just a matter of taking out the trash. I’d already called up a waste disposal company to pick up the ruined furniture I couldn’t carry on my own. I’d have to order a new mattress, a new couch.

It was okay. I had savings. Maybe living here would be easier if the things around the house were more mine and less Grandma’s. Fewer reminders of what I’d lost and the painful times on the way to losing them.

After I’d cleared the floor of anything large enough to simply grab, I got out the broom and swept the smaller shards into a pile. I was just dumping the dustpan into the garbage bag when someone knocked on the door. My heart lurched two ways at once—with hope that it might somehow be Jeremy and fear that it might be the people who’d created this mess.

I turned around. I’d left the inner door open so the warm spring breeze could pass through the house, which gave me a clear view to the porch. Malcolm Fitch was standing on the other side of the screen door.

The second I saw him, my heart started full-out hammering. What was he doing here? He’d never asked where I lived. He had to know showing up like this would seem weird to me. So why would he act so brazenly creepy?

Maybe he thought I was so worked up about this mystery man possibly stalking me, so grateful for Malcolm’s help, that I wouldn’t even care?

He’d already seen me. He raised his hand with a brief wave. No pretending I wasn’t home.

I walked into the front hall with a hesitant smile. “Hi,” I said, stopping a few feet from the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I thought I’d stop by and see exactly what happened with this break-in.” He cocked his head. “What are you doing here, Grace? I thought you were too scared to stay at home. Isn’t that why you got that room in the hotel?”

There was a slight sneer in his voice that set my nerves even more on edge. He’d been so careful before to seem friendly, supportive. Kind. Now the vibe I got from him was weirdly cold.

I resisted the urge to hug myself, settling for rubbing my hand up and down my arm. “Yeah,” I said. “But, you know, after I talked to you yesterday, I realized I can’t just hide away. I can’t let some creep change how I live. This is my home, and no one can change that.”

Malcolm made a humming sound. He reached for the door handle, and I realized I hadn’t bothered to turn the lock. I’d never needed to lock the screen door while I was home, not here on this quiet street. Not before the creepy psychic hunters had arrived in the neighborhood.

I moved to dash forward, to stop him, but he’d already tugged the door open. He had at least a few inches and thirty or forty pounds on me—and it wasn’t as if I knew how to fight. I backed up a step instead.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep up the pretense. “I appreciate everything you’ve done to help, but I’m really not looking to have visitors right now. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do. If there’s something else you wanted to ask about, maybe we could meet up later?”

“No,” Malcolm said smoothly. “I think there are a few things we need to talk about now.” He leaned against the wall, his pale blue eyes fixed on me. “Like why you’ve been lying to me.”

A chill washed over me. I controlled my voice as well as I could. “What are you talking about? I haven’t—”

“I understand you must feel some loyalty to the man who saved your life,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “But there are some things that are more important than any one person’s life. I’m serving a higher purpose here, Grace. If you knew half of what we hope to achieve...”

What the hell was he talking about? I couldn’t stop myself from shaking. If I’d had my phone, I could have tried to call the police—it was on the kitchen counter. I didn’t think I could get there fast enough.

“Look,” I said, motioning to the door in the hopes that bravado would do the trick, “I don’t know what you mean, but I want you to leave. Now.”

Malcolm pushed off the wall again, but not toward the door. His hand dug into his pocket. “It’s all right. You don’t need to cooperate to contribute to our cause. You, darling, are going to make the perfect bait.”

My pulse scattered. I flung myself toward the kitchen, meaning to make a dash for the back door with my phone, but Malcolm’s hand closed around my wrist. He heaved me toward him. My feet stumbled over each other. I jabbed out with my elbow, and he darted out of the way. His free hand clapped a sickly smelling cloth over my nose and mouth.

I was already dragging in a breath to scream. The cloying scent filled my lungs, and the world around me spiraled away into darkness.

* * *

When I came to, my head was foggy. A tiny ache pinched the bridge of my nose. I had to blink several times before the room I was sitting in came into focus. And then I just stared at it dully for a long moment before my brain started to process what was in front of me.

I was sitting, in a stiff wooden chair. My arms were starting to ache too where they were pulled around the back of the chair. A plastic cable cut into my wrists when I tried to move. Other ties secured both my ankles to the chair legs. Other than my head, I was completely immobilized.

The chair stood in the center of a huge warehouse room. Pale light streaked through high, dust-coated windows. The cracked concrete floor was bare except for a few stacks of packing crates near the walls. Narrow metal beams crisscrossed the upper reaches beneath the vaulted ceiling. A thick, oily smell like mechanic’s grease filled my nose.

Footsteps rasped against the floor behind me. My back stiffened. I yanked at my arms again and winced as the plastic cable bit deeper.

Two figures strolled into view: Malcolm and the woman with the black, short-cropped hair I’d seen staked out by my house a couple nights ago.

“What’s going on?” I burst out. “What are you doing to me?”

Malcolm crossed his arms over his chest with an air of total calm. “I thought I explained that already, Grace. You’re our bait. The man who saved you, the man you’ve been seeing, whatever his real name is—he’ll come. You know that, don’t you?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen him since then,” I said.

The woman chuckled. “Oh, come on now. Did you really think we couldn’t look up who paid for that hotel room? Conveniently the exact same person who rented a car we found abandoned earlier today.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought about that—that they could break right into the hotel’s records. I opened my mouth, scrambling for another excuse, but Malcolm shook his head.

“Enough stories. I think we’ve had our fill of those. And we know exactly where you’ve been since then.” His lips curled into a mocking smile. “While you were spinning your sob stories yesterday, I slipped a tracking device into your purse.”

Any words I might have said died in my throat. My mouth went dry. They knew then—where I’d gone this afternoon, where Jeremy was.

Malcolm nodded. “You see now. We work for very powerful people. People you really shouldn’t have messed with. This all could have happened with a lot less discomfort for you, you know. It was stupid of you to think you could fool us.”

I couldn’t see any point in pretending anymore. The jig was up. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them anything they didn’t already know either. “I fooled you for a while,” I said.

The woman’s eyes flashed. Good. Let them get angry with me. They’d be more likely to spill something they didn’t mean to then. Maybe there was still some way Jeremy could get out of this okay.

Me... The strange thing was, I wasn’t even that worried about myself. It wasn’t me they wanted. This was all about Jeremy. He’d stayed ahead of them for decades before now, and then I’d fallen into his life. Well, fallen and then shoved myself further in. If he hadn’t been there when the truck had come at me—if I hadn’t insisted on seeing him again—

I should have let him run. When he’d wanted to before, when he’d thought that was his best option, I should have told him to go. Keep himself safe. I’d been so fucking selfish trying to talk him into staying. Convincing myself it was for his benefit when mostly I just didn’t want to lose his presence in my life.

At least if I’d lost him that way, I’d have known he was probably still okay.

“I wouldn’t mouth off in the position you’re in,” the woman snapped.

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “Now, Mauve. No need to torment the little mouse.”

I gritted my teeth at that remark. “If you know so much, what do you need ‘bait’ for anyway? Why haven’t you already grabbed him like you did with me?”

Tell me: Where are you weak?

“A confrontation on ground of our choosing is always preferable,” Malcolm said. Boots thudded against the floor behind me. More of his people, here to make sure they took Jeremy in. The other figures didn’t move into my view, but my back prickled with the sense of their presence.

“Your ‘friend’ obviously has a lot of practice at keeping ahead of us,” Malcolm went on. “The one thing that slows him down is you.”

He held up my phone. The screen was live, a text conversation showing. I couldn’t make out the words.

“He’s already realized something’s afoot. He’s been texting and calling you for the last hour. So we gave him a tip to let him know where to find you. He didn’t reply, but I’d be very surprised if he isn’t on his way here right now.”

My heart sank. He would be. I tensed my legs, but the bindings around my ankles held fast. If there was some way I could have gotten out of here... Some way I could have told him to just leave, to call their bluff...

But there wasn’t. I was caught here like a rabbit in a snare. I swallowed hard and brought my gaze back to Malcolm. A question I wasn’t even sure I wanted the answer to fell from my mouth.

“What are you going to do to him after you’ve caught him?”

Malcolm smiled again, so triumphant this time that it made me want to puke. “Don’t you worry your pretty head about that, darling. Believe me, we’ll make good use of him.”