“Do you think it will be tonight?”

“It could be, and if I have an answer, I’ll call you right away. What time do you go to bed?”

“Call me anytime. I doubt I’ll sleep much, anyway.” Mary’s head was already swimming with thoughts of paint chips and swatches, rug samples and curtains. A homebody at heart, she’d dreamed of her first house like some girls dream of their wedding day. And wedding days weren’t something she wanted to think about right now.

“The seller has forty-eight hours to either accept or reject our offer.”

“Gotcha.” Mary walked the realtor to the door. “I should’ve known that, being a lawyer.”

“A partner, even?”

“Not yet, and don’t jinx me.” Mary opened her apartment door, and Janine gave her a businesslike hug.

“Good luck!”

“Thanks,” Mary said, surprised to find herself welling up.

She closed the door and stood there, savoring the moment, alone. In the movies, she would have felt bad because she didn’t have anyone to share it with, but in reality, she didn’t mind. It was her moment, only. She’d worked for this moment every day since law school, and it had finally come to pass, because she willed it so. She had changed her life with the stroke of a pen. And a very large check.

Ring! It was her cell phone, and she ran back to the kitchen, where she’d left her BlackBerry. She picked it up and checked the display. Anthony, read the screen, and Mary braced herself.

“Hello?” she said, pressing the green button.

“Hey.” Anthony sounded subdued. “Sorry I missed your call. I was at my mother’s, fixing her sink.”

Mary swallowed hard. “Sorry if I got hysterical. I needed to make a decision, and I did.”

“So?”

“I made an offer on the house.” Mary’s mouth went dry. “I hope you understand. If you want, I’ll come over and we can talk. It’s probably not a conversation we should have over the telephone.”

“Well, I’m happy for you.” Anthony’s tone softened, and Mary could hear the genuine emotion in his voice.

“Thanks.”

“You should be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you, and I’m sorry for what I said in the house today and the way I spoke to you.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Mary said, biting her lip. She almost rather that he’d yell at her or be angry. She heard a new resignation in his voice, and a finality.

“We have a major issue that we should explore, and I think you’re right, we shouldn’t do it over the phone. Let’s give this some thought, then we can talk about it another time. Does that sound good?”

Gulp. “Sure, you free for dinner tomorrow?”

“I think it will take me a little longer than that. I need some perspective. I think we need to take a break.”

Mary felt stricken. Suddenly she heard a beep on the phone that meant another call was coming in, but she wasn’t about to interrupt him. “I don’t think we need a break.”

“We do. I do.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

“Anthony, are we breaking up?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I have to go. I’ll call you. Bye.”

Mary hung up, anguished. It was one thing to tell yourself you can accept the consequences, but another when they actually happen. Still she wouldn’t take the decision back, even now. Buying the house was either the best or the worst thing she had ever done.

Does being me cost me you?

The BlackBerry beeped, signaling that someone had left a message. It could have been Janine or a client, so she pressed a button for voicemail and a message came on.

“DiNunzio, it’s me.”

It was Bennie, but she sounded strained.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine, but I’m calling you from Pellesburg Hospital, which is God knows where. I need you to feed and walk Bear. Ask my neighbor next door, with the red shutters, for my house key. Then call Marshall and tell her to cancel all my credit cards. Call me back and I’ll tell you the details. I don’t know the hospital’s main number, just call me back.”

Mary pressed END, bewildered. Bennie was in the hospital? What happened? Was it some kind of accident? What was she doing in Pellesburg, wherever that was? And why all this stuff with the credit cards?

Mary checked her phone log, which showed the last call, so she pressed the number and a woman answered, “Pellesburg Hospital.”

“I’d like to speak to Bennie Rosato. She’s a patient there.”

“Thank you.” There was a clicking sound, then the operator said, “We have no one here by that name.”

“I’m sure she’s there. She just called me a minute ago.”

“Sorry, but I show no listing for a Bennie Rosato, and in any event I couldn’t ring a patient’s room at this hour. We don’t permit calls after ten.”

“But she just called me.”

“I show no one by that name, and as I say, we do not permit patients to receive calls after ten. Call tomorrow morning after eight o’clock.”

Mary felt confounded. “But she said it’s an emergency. That I should call her back.”

“Please call back in the morning. Those are the rules.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, and hung up, worried. If Bennie said it was an emergency, it had to be an atomic bomb. She felt honored that Bennie would call her for help. They really had turned a corner in their relationship.

Partners!

Bennie left a message for DiNunzio, then hung up the bedside phone. Her head was clear, and so was her mission. She had to get Alice. It wouldn’t be easy to find her, now that she had such a head start, but it was all Bennie could think about. Being in that box had changed her, she could feel it. Something had happened to her. She felt different, inside.

Her right hand was in a splint wrapped with an Ace bandage, and her left was bandaged in gauze, but she wrestled with the thick guardrail to put it down and threw off the cotton coverlet. Cuts and bruises covered her legs, her feet were swollen, and two toes on each one had been bandaged together. She swung her legs out of bed, leaned on the IV stalk, and was standing up, painfully, when a nurse entered the room and rushed over.

“No! Please, don’t get up.” The nurse looked about fifty years old, and had concerned brown eyes, a graying braid, and white scrubs with dancing kittens. “You’re not ready to walk around yet and you’ll disturb the IV.”

“I need to get to the police. I can’t wait any longer.” Bennie knew she sounded abrupt, but it was as if she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t herself.

“We called them, twice. We called in triage, and so did my supervisor. Please, sit down.” The nurse pressed on her shoulder, firmly, and Bennie sat back on the bed, for the moment.

“What did the cops say? Why aren’t they here?”

“They said they’d come and take your statement as soon as they could. We have only a small force, not like a big city.” The nurse checked the IV and rolled the metal stalk back into place. “Right now, you must be still. I’m surprised you’re even awake.”

“Will you call them again, or ask the supervisor to?”

“I will, and if they arrive in the meantime, I’ll show them right in. Do you remember the last time you ate or drank anything?” The nurse reached into a metal basket on the wall and retrieved a blood pressure cuff.

“Friday night, at dinner with my sister. She gave me a drug, then she tried to kill me. She buried me alive in a box, in a field-”

“I saw something like that in your file. You told that to triage, in the ER.” The nurse wrapped the cuff around Bennie’s arm. “How did you injure your hand? You have a small break.”

“I had to get out of the box, then there was a wolf. It attacked me and I had to fight it off.”

The nurse lifted an eyebrow, pumping the black rubber bulb. “You were under the influence when you arrived. Do remember what you had to drink?”

“Whiskey. The man who picked me up gave it to me.”