What was I thinking? I was thinking “Mallory.”

“I have to…” he said. I thought he’d stopped himself before he completed the sentence. “I wanted to give you… what I’ve been writing. We talked about it. Remember?”

You bet I remember.

He leaned into the Camaro and came back out with an old, beat-up, dark-blue box imprinted with the logo of Kinko’s, the copy palace.

“Here it is. It’s not done,” he said.

He held it out for me. I took it. The ream-sized carton was far from full. I guessed it held fewer than a hundred pages. I was already wondering: Is this it? Is this really the reason he’s come to my home shortly after dawn? To give me part of a novel?

“Don’t read it, yet. I’ll tell you when.”

“You want me to have it, but not to read it?”

“Yes.”

I thought my question warranted a better explanation. Bob, apparently, didn’t agree. “That’s it?” I said.

“I have a long way to go. I’m still trying to get it… I want it to be right before you read it.”

“Couldn’t you have just held on to it until you decide that you would like me to read it?” Or until you see me tomorrow?

He chanced a glance at me. The tenor of his look was questioning whether I had suddenly become mentally challenged. As though it would explain everything, he said, “This is a copy. It’s not the original. I have one, too.”

He’d totally missed the point of my question. With Bob, that happened with some frequency.

“Okay,” I said. I was already putting together a list of things we’d have to discuss during the next day’s session.

“You’ll understand,” he assured me. “When I tell you it’s okay to read it, you’ll understand.”

“You’ll explain?”

“Yes. You like it?”

I raised the box up a couple of inches. “I’ll let you know. After you tell me when I should read it.”

“I meant the Camaro. It’s cherry, don’t you think?”

I gazed at the glossy black car, its pristine paint marred only by the faintest hint of Spanish Hills dust. “Sure is,” I said. “It sure is.”

“Yep,” he agreed.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Bob, have you thought more about the question I asked you last week? Whether you know something about Mallory Miller that you should share with the police?”

He kicked at the dirt. “You know the… that woman who was killed? Who died? On Broadway? The therapist, like you?”

Like me? I felt gooseflesh on my back. “Hannah Grant? A few weeks ago?”

“Her. She was Mallory’s… therapist. Mallory was afraid after she died. Really afraid. She thought… Mallory has this thing about Christmas. The guy that the neighbors saw? You know about that?”

Oh shit. “Which guy? On Christmas night? Outside? That guy?”

If Bob knew anything new about Mallory and the Christmas guy it meant that he’d seen Mallory since she disappeared.

“I was watching a movie.”

“At Doyle’s house? You were there?”

“Before Christmas she thought someone may have found out about… oh boy. And because of… that’s why… she wasn’t comfortable. No, not at all.”

“That’s why what?” There was enough pressure in my questions to launch a rocket.

Smooth, Alan. Real smooth.

“She doesn’t really like Christmas. I don’t either. She was scared that she might be-Sheesh. I can’t, I shouldn’t… It happened once, it could happen… I have to go. I don’t want you to…,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t like to be late.”

You don’t want me to what? “I’m very interested in hearing more, Bob. It will just take another moment. You came all the way out here.”

I’m sure I sounded pathetic.

“I have to go.” He opened the door and climbed into his car. The vinyl seats were so cold that they squeaked with his weight.

“Are you scared about something, too, Bob?” I asked through the glass.

He shook his head.

“Do you know anything about where Mallory is? Anything? Please tell me.”

“I’m late.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, barely loudly enough so that I could hear.

He fishtailed a little as he spun around to head out the lane. The rumble of his motor was almost enough to stifle the pounding in my ears.

She was scared. He’d said she was scared.

Was I tempted to read what Bob had written? Of course I was, right that minute. I was also certain that my temptation was part of the challenge that Bob was positing.

Why was he setting things up to tantalize me that he might know something about Mallory Miller’s fate and then keep the evidence of what he might know just out of my reach? He had taunted me already with the proposition that he knew her, was friends with her. He had just added the proposition that he knew that Mallory had seen Hannah for psychotherapy. And he’d added the tantalizing possibility that he’d been right next door in Doyle’s house on Christmas night. He’d said that Mallory was scared.

I didn’t know what Bob was up to with Mallory. Far from it. But trust-therapeutic trust between Bob and me-was on the table in the form of the manuscript in the Kinko’s box. That much was perfectly clear.

What were the odds that Bob actually knew something crucial about Mallory?

Low, really low.

Bob’s life was smoke, not fire. Heat, not light. Bob hadn’t told me anything that was really new to me. I was already aware that Mallory had seen Hannah for psychotherapy. I already knew about the man who had been loitering outside, everybody did. All Bob had really added to the equation was that Mallory was scared.

And that he’d been next door watching a movie.

Hopefully, the next day I’d learn what Bob thought Mallory was frightened about. I could wait until then.

Long before the dust had settled on the lane from the Camaro’s too-rapid departure, I’d flicked off the lid of the Kinko’s box and looked inside. The flimsy cardboard box was less than a quarter full of 8¹⁄2 11 sheets. The title page was simple, the typeface minuscule.

My Little Runaway

By R.C. Brandt

In the lower right-hand corner Bob had carefully sketched the encircled c of the copyright symbol and beside it had typed out the word “copyright” and beside that, the year.

I closed the box.

I didn’t see patients most Fridays. Diane skipped most Mondays. So I wasn’t at all surprised that her Saab wasn’t in its usual spot in front of our wreck of a garage all day Monday while I was at the office.

Anyway, she’d asked me if I would cover her practice in case she and Raoul went away for the weekend, and weekends for Diane almost always included Mondays.

But the phone call she made to me that evening caught me off guard. Dinner was done, the kitchen was clean, Lauren had Grace in the tub for a mother-daughter bubble soak. Their giggles and laughter filled the house and buoyed my spirits like a healthy dose of rock and roll.

I had the dogs at my feet. Life was good.

“Can you hear that?” Diane asked.

I heard noise but it sounded like nothing more than routine mobile-phone clutter crap. I figured Diane was in her Saab, driving behind the spine of a hogback someplace, or in the deep recesses of one of the many canyons that snake west out of Boulder into the heart of the Rockies.

“No, I don’t think so. You’re breaking up.”

Then I heard it-the frenetic calliope melody of a slot-machine jackpot followed by an orgasmic scream of “I won! I won! Yes! Yes! I told you about this machine. Didn’t I?” I could almost hear the cascade of dollar coins tumbling into the stainless-steel tray.

“You up in Blackhawk?”

“Nope.”

“Central City?”

“One more try.”

I could have wasted my third guess on Cripple Creek, the final member of the triad of Colorado pioneer mountain towns that the electorate had burdened with legalized gambling. Instead I went for the jackpot.