Bennie woke up, groggy. She opened her eyes but everything stayed pitch black. She didn’t know where she was. She seemed to be lying down. Where was the kitchen? The house? Alice? She couldn’t see anything. Was she asleep? She got up and slam!

“Ow!” she heard herself say, momentarily stunned. She slumped backwards, hitting the back of her head. On what? Where was she? Was she dreaming? Was she awake? One question chased the next in a crazy circle. It was so dark. If she was asleep, it was time to wake up.

She raised her hand and bam! Her fingers hit something hard, above her. She flashed on the dinner with Alice. That had happened, hadn’t it? She hadn’t dreamed it, had she? Her face had fallen onto the table, hitting her cheek.

Give it up. It’s over.

Bennie tried to remember. Had she heard that? Had Alice said that? What the hell? Where was she? The only sound was her own breathing. She raised her arms, cautiously, and hit the thing on top of her. She felt along its surface with her fingertips. It was solid. Coarse. She pressed but it didn’t move. She knocked it and heard a rap, like wood. It felt like a top.

A lid.

She didn’t get it. She couldn’t process it. Her arms were at an angle. The wood was less than a foot from her face. She flattened her arms against her sides. There was another surface under her fingertips, behind her. She spread her arms, running them along the surface behind her. More wood? She shifted her weight down, shimmying on her back. Her toes hit something. Her feet were bare, her shoes gone. She pointed her toes against whatever she had reached. It seemed like a bottom.

It’s a box. Am I in a box?

She didn’t understand. It couldn’t be. She touched along her body from her neck to her knees. She had on her suit from work. Her skirt felt torn. Her knees hurt. There was wetness there. Blood? She told herself not to panic. The air felt close. She squinted against the darkness, but it was absolute.

She felt the lid. Her thoughts raced ahead of her fingers. The top was sealed. There was nothing inside the box. No air, food, water. No hole to breathe through. She forced herself to stay calm. She needed to understand what was going on. It wasn’t a dream, it was real. She couldn’t believe it and she could, both at once. Was she really in a box? Would Alice come get her out? Would anybody else?

A sense of dread crept over her. She hadn’t told anybody at the office where she was going. It was Friday night, and the associates had scattered. DiNunzio had taken Judy Carrier home to her parents’ for dinner. Anne Murphy was out of the country for summer vacation, as was Lou Jacobs, her firm’s investigator. Bennie’s best friend, Sam Freminet, was in Maui, and she wasn’t close to anybody else. Nobody would realize that she was missing until Monday morning.

She exploded in panic, yelling and pounding the lid with both hands. It didn’t budge. She kept pounding with all her might, breaking a sweat. The lid still didn’t move. She felt the seams with shaking fingers. She couldn’t tell how it was sealed. She didn’t hear a nail or anything else give way.

She pushed and pounded, then started kicking, driving her bare toes into the lid. It didn’t move but she kept going, powered by sheer terror, and in the next minute she heard herself screaming, even though the words shamed her.

“Please, Alice, help!”

Alice dried the Pyrex dish and placed it where she’d found it in the cabinet, then folded the dishtowel over the handle of the oven, the way it had been. She went to the table, straightened the stack of paid bills, and squared the corners, as she had found them.

The name on the mail read Ms. Sally Cavanaugh, and Ms. Cavanaugh would never know that while she was in the Poconos, a random woman had entered her house through an unlocked window and served wine à la Rohypnol in her kitchen. That’s what she got for broadcasting her vacation plans all over the local post office. Alice had taken a train from Philly to the little town, scoped it out until she found an empty house, then taken a cab here in the dark, so nobody would see her.

She went to the living room, sliding her cell phone from her shorts. She flipped it open with a thumb and pressed until she found the photo. She had hauled Cavanaugh’s things up from the basement, put them back in the living room, and compared the scene with the photo to make sure it was all in order; family and Siamese cat photos on the end tables, quilted knitting bag next to the worn brown chair, bestselling novels stacked on the credenza.

She picked up her black cloth bag and Bennie’s messenger bag, then locked the front door by pressing the button on its knob. She twisted the deadbolt to lock, slid up the screen on the window, then climbed onto the porch, closing the window behind her. It was already dark because it had taken her so long to get rid of Bennie. A yellow bug light shone by the door, but no one was around to see her anyway. A thick woods screened the house from view, and it was surrounded by horse pastures. The air was humid and smelled like horse manure. She hurried down the porch steps, her footfalls pounding on the wood. She wasn’t sorry to leave the country.

She dug her hand into the messenger bag and found the keys to Bennie’s maroon Lexus, glistening in the driveway. She hit the button on the fob, opened the door, and jumped inside. She twisted on the ignition, reversed out of the driveway, then drove onto the private dirt road, spraying dirt and stones. She followed the road as it wound through the woods, passing battered black mailboxes until she reached the main road, then the highway. The air-conditioning blasted cold, and her tank top was finally drying. She’d worked up a sweat dragging Bennie into the backseat.

She hit the gas and relaxed into the ride. Everything was going according to plan. She’d been working at PLG during the day, but started moonlighting with a side business of her own, managing two women who sold Xanax, Ambien, Vikes, and Oxys to housewives at a gym and an upscale boutique. She fell into it when she met her boyfriend Q, who ran a full-scale operation all over the Northeast. He supplied her, but he would’ve taken a cut if he knew how much she really charged. The ladies who lunch weren’t driving their Land Rovers to 52nd and Diamond for their Lexapro. But last week, she’d taken one risk too many.

Men.

Bad boys were her weakness, and though she’d had a good thing going with Q, even the CEO gets boring after a while. She’d hooked up with one of Q’s runners, Jimmy, and they had some fun for a few weeks, on the down. But when Jimmy didn’t show up to meet her, two nights ago, she guessed what must’ve happened. Q was a badass and he wouldn’t stop until he’d disappeared her, too. He had people everywhere, and if one of his crew ever got ahold of her, she’d beg them not to take her alive. Bottom line, she had to get away, so she decided to become her rich sister long enough to take her money and run. The scam shouldn’t take more than a few days. Alice would have killed Bennie but she didn’t want to see her face on a dead body, especially not in that horrible suit.

Who still shops at Brooks?

She hit the gas, feeling her pulse quicken as the car accelerated through the dark night, over open road. She stayed the speed limit, but it was killing her. She loved to go fast, she fed on the sensation. She always wanted faster, bigger, better, newer, harder. She moved on when she got bored or restless, she specialized in cutting her losses. Life wasn’t a dress rehearsal after all, and Alice lived hers to the fullest. She couldn’t help the way she was. It was all because of her childhood, which was too damn good.