Serena's body was ice-cold when she slid under the fleece blanket into bed an hour later. Frosty air breathed on her face and bare shoulders through a crack in the window. The bedroom was small, like the other matchbox rooms in the old house, which had no foundation underneath it, just wooden pilings that made the floors slant like a carnival fun house. The room had a comforting, musty smell about it, a smell of age and the sea that had long ago taken up residence deep in its timbers. She often woke up to that smell and heard odd noises in the night, as if ghosts were passing from room to room.

She had spent much of the past year haunting antique shops along the North Shore to pick up cherry wood dressers, throw rugs, and old nautical equipment. She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the contrast to her condominium in Las Vegas, which was stark and modern, done in blacks and whites, with her photographs of bitterroot and landscapes of the jagged Mojave hills on the walls. It was an emotionless place, and that was how she wanted it then. Since meeting Jonny, though, she had been flooded by emotions, and she was getting better now at managing the demons from her past, letting them out without feeling that they could control her. That was one of the reasons she enjoyed the antique quality of this house. She wanted a sense of the past again, which she had blocked out for years. When she held a clock from the early 1900s in her hands, she could feel all the people who had owned it and touched it.

She molded herself against Jonny in bed. She knew from his breathing that he was awake. He hadn't said a word as she came into the bedroom, bringing the chill of the night with her, and quickly stripped. When she slid her fingers between his legs, she felt him stir.

"Do you know how cold that hand is?" he murmured.

"Sorry."

"I'm not complaining."

Serena kissed him. "I thought you'd be asleep."

"Not when you're out on a job at midnight."

"I'm okay."

"You took your gun," he said.

"It was just a precaution."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I can't say anything," Serena said.

"Even in the box?"

"Not yet."

Stride turned his head toward her and opened his eyes. Serena could see he was troubled.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He pushed himself up in bed until he was sitting. "I found out that Eric was involved with Tanjy Powell. I had to tell Abel Teitscher about it."

"So you're off the case again."

Stride nodded.

"Did Abel tell you anything about the investigation?"

"I pried a couple of things out of him," Stride said.

"Like what?"

"The most intriguing thing was that Eric went to see Tony Wells the night he died," Stride said.

Serena propped herself on one elbow and brushed her hair back out of her face. "Tony? Why?"

"Tony can't say. Privilege."

"Was Eric getting therapy?"

"Abel doesn't think so."

"But Maggie was."

"Yeah."

"Do you think Tony knows something about Eric's murder?" Serena asked.

"I do, and I think he wants to help, but he can't talk unless Maggie says it's okay."

"That's a no-brainer if it clears her of murder."

"You'd think so, but the question is, what's Maggie hiding?" Stride said. "Something's going on that she wants to keep secret."

"I have an appointment with Tony tomorrow morning. Maybe I can get something out of him."

"Not likely. Not if it involves a patient."

"Tell me about Tanjy," Serena said.

"As far as I can tell, she left her place at ten o'clock on Monday night. She took her car, and that's the last anyone saw of her."

"Did you get any hits on the car?"

"No, we've got alerts on it all over the five-state area, and the media has picked up on it, too. So far, nothing. There hasn't been any activity on her credit cards or bank accounts. Her cell phone hasn't been used since Monday night." He added, "I did find several calls to Eric over the last few weeks."

"Do you know what was going on between them?"

"Abel thinks it was an affair."

"Could Tanjy have killed Eric?"

"That was my first thought, but there isn't any evidence that she did."

"Except you say she's unstable," Serena said. "Maybe even violent."

"She's a strange girl." He waited several beats and then added, "Look, don't take this the wrong way. I'm just trying to understand who Tanjy was, so help me out here. Do women really fantasize about rape?"

Serena froze. She rolled away. "That's an ugly question."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"You know what Blue Dog and my mother did to me in Phoenix."

"I know."

She got out of bed. The frigid air raised gooseflesh on her skin. She went to the window and pushed aside the curtains that looked out toward the trees and scrub behind the cottage. She could see her own reflection dimly in the glass. "There's nothing even remotely erotic about rape. I don't understand how any woman could think so."

"I'm with you, but I've seen the bulletin boards where Tanjy was posting her stories. She wasn't the only one."

Serena didn't reply. Jonny came up behind her, laying his hands on her shoulders. Instinctively, she shrugged them away.

"I hope you don't think I ever wanted to do it with that bastard," she said.

"Of course not."

"The first therapist I ever went to asked me that once. He asked me if I ever had an orgasm with Blue Dog."

"Son of a bitch."

"Just to be clear, my answer was no. Then it was goodbye."

"I wasn't trying to get you upset. I just need to get inside Tanjy's head."

Serena turned to face him. "I'm not upset."

"No?"

"I'm talking about it. A year ago, I wouldn't have been able to do that."

He put his arms around her. She knew that he expected her to cry, but she didn't have any tears inside. She was angry; she would never entirely escape the anger. But what happened to her when she a teenager was over. Her mother was dead. Blue Dog was dead, too. Her past was nothing but bad memories that would always be a part of who she was, but not the most important part, not the part that controlled her.

"Come to bed," she said.

She led him back, and she rolled over on top of him under the blanket and made love to him quickly and silently, until they were both dewy with sweat and ready to sleep. She slid off him, and she was just drifting away when Jonny mumbled something groggily into her ear.

"Put one word in the box," he said.

About Dan. About her midnight rendezvous.

She whispered back, hoping he'd still be able to sleep, "Blackmail."

Maggie was dreaming again.

An array of six men, naked and wearing gold masks, surrounded her bed, two on each side. They had dead eyes that reminded her of fish heads on the beach, milky skin with swollen bellies, and limp members hanging uselessly between their legs. They ogled her nude body. The two at the head of the bed parted, forming a gap in their ranks, and Eric stepped between them with her gun in his hand. He aimed it at her chest.

"I'm sorry, Nicole," he told her.

A flash of fire belched from the gun barrel. Maggie looked down, expecting to see a burnt, gaping wound in her torso, but saw only her naked breasts. She raised her hands to touch herself, and then she realized that she had no hands, only bloody stumps unevenly hacked off, leaving nothing but bone and blood. She looked up at the mirror above her bed and realized she had no head, too. She was a limbless dead trunk, with no mouth to scream.

Maggie screamed anyway and shocked herself awake.

She was sprawled on the bed on top of the covers, taking loud, open-mouthed breaths, like a fish. Slowly, the images faded to gray ash and sank back into her unconscious. She was alone and disoriented.