All she wanted to do was fall into bed and think about all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours-then sleep.

Yawning, she kicked off her sandals and left them where they landed, under a table by the door. Her purse still over her shoulder, she walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face.

Then she thought better of that.

She’d rather fall asleep still tasting Wyatt’s last kiss, her skin, slightly raw from his razor stubble, still smelling faintly of his aftershave.

She was about to hang her purse on the knob, strip off her dress, and put on the nightie that hung on the back of the door…

Then she was struck by something odd.

The bathroom was dark.

There was no familiar glow from the night-light she kept plugged into an outlet above the sink and never turned off.

She had changed the bulb just the other day.

It couldn’t have burned out again so soon.

Frowning, she reached for the switch and flicked it.

The light turned on.

Huh.

That was strange.

Had she flipped it off without thinking yesterday?

She doubted it; she had never done that before.

She looked at herself in the mirror, noticing the apprehension in her own expression.

Okay, don’t get carried away. You’re just being paranoid. Maybe the power went out because of the storm. And maybe that tripped something in the outlet, and the light turned itself off.

A reach, but she was willing to believe it, because what else could possibly have-

Lindsay froze.

Behind her, in the mirror, she could swear she had just seen a human shadow pass along the wall beyond the bathroom door.

Leo waited until dawn, when he heard his mother moving around in the kitchen.

Then, after an entirely sleepless night, he quietly sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

Ma always got up early on Sunday mornings.

By the time Leo and his brother woke up to the scent of frying eggs and bacon, she would have drunk her coffee, read the paper, walked to seven o’clock Mass and back, and mixed the meatballs for the homemade spaghetti sauce they’d have for dinner.

Never, until this particular Sunday morning, had Leo appreciated the comforting ritual. Nor had he fully appreciated his mother.

A wave of sentiment swept through him when he spotted her from the kitchen doorway, standing at the sink in her faded pink terry cloth housecoat, filling the old coffee percolator with cold water.

He had to force his voice past a lump in his throat to say, “Ma?”

She gasped and jumped, spinning around. “Leo! You scared me!”

“Sorry, Ma.”

“What are you doing up? Are you sick?” she asked worriedly.

“No.”

He hesitated. He had lain awake all night, shaken to the core and riddled with guilt. Now, he wondered if he had made the right decision.

But his mother wore an expectant look, and it was too late to change his mind now.

Anyway, he felt like a frightened little boy who needed his mommy.

Thank God she’s here for me. Right here, where she’s been all along.

He took a deep breath and plunged in. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Her back flattened to the wall, her hand gripping the handle of the knife, she sent up a silent prayer.

Now there was nothing to do but wait, barely breathing, for her prey to step across the threshold.

And when you do, you won’t have a chance, she promised, knowing she had the element of surprise in her favor.

She waited for what seemed like endless hours, holding her breath.

Then, at last, she poised the knife as she heard movement from the other side of the wall.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure move stealthily into view.

In that instant, she leapt into action, attacking with a vengeance, and blindly. She could feel the knife sinking into flesh, heard the high-pitched cry of pain.

She saw that the blade had caught her in the side just below her rib cage; blood was pouring from the wound.

Yet suddenly, shockingly, she somehow found herself on the defensive, fending off a violent retaliatory assault. Her enemy was a force to be reckoned with-now her only thought was getting the hell out of here, hoping she was going to escape with her life.

They wrestled on the bathroom floor and she struggled to hang on to the knife, to reposition it so that she could use it again. She was enraged now, hell-bent on doing whatever she had to do to survive.

I can’t die now. Not when everything is coming together for me at last. Please, God…

They rolled over on the hard tile, rolled over again and she found herself on top. She seized her chance, knowing that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get another.

With a primal grunt and a mighty arc of her arm, she shoved the blade as hard as she could.

Again, it found its target, and she could feel it sink sickeningly into flesh and bone, until it hit something more unforgiving than either.

Wallboard, she realized…she had just pinned a human hand to the wall like that arrow had, twenty years ago, pinned Jake Marcott to the tree.

Her ears rang with the terrible howl of agony that erupted, echoing through the tiled bathroom.

For a moment she was frozen in sheer horror at what had just happened-at what she had just inflicted upon another human being.

Then she bolted from the apartment, spattered with blood, leaving her assailant pinned to the wall with Wyatt’s Parisian chef’s knife, bestowed upon her as a parting gift.

“Take it,” he’d said with a smile. “I don’t want to come home next weekend to find that you’ve chopped off a finger with your dull one.”

She had thanked him, never knowing, as she tucked it into her purse, that it was about to save her life.

There was no traffic on the FDR Drive at this hour on a Sunday morning. Wyatt would be at JFK Airport with plenty of time to spare before his flight. Too much time.

Wyatt was wistful as he gazed out the window at a barge on the East River, realizing that he could have lingered at least another fifteen, twenty minutes, with Lindsay.

Yeah, but so? What’s fifteen minutes? he asked himself, feeling vaguely foolish.

It’s damned significant, he answered his own question. Particularly when you hadn’t seen someone in twenty years and weren’t going to see her again for an entire week.

There were plenty of things he could have told Lindsay in fifteen minutes.

Yeah, and you probably would have regretted all of them the second you left.

Wyatt Goddard was no stranger to morning-after ardor. It had led to his moving in with Allison and making doomed commitments to a couple of other women in the past.

Maybe it was better that their good-bye had been so hurried.

He’d kissed her, at least, and given her that chef’s knife she had coveted in his kitchen.

Someday soon, I’ll take her to Paris and buy her a whole set, he vowed-then shook his head.

Morning-after ardor again. Making plans, making promises. Good thing they were only to himself this time.

It was a good thing he was going to be an ocean away from Lindsay for the next six days.

That would keep him from saying or doing anything rash, would give him enough space to figure out whether his feelings for Lindsay were rekindled infatuation…or something more enduring.

“Stay back,” the burly NYPD officer cautioned Lindsay as he and his partner, guns at the ready, prepared to enter her apartment with the key they’d quickly retrieved from Bob, the building super.

The door had swung shut and locked after her when she bolted. Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, had passed since the ordeal in her bathroom, but her heart was still racing, every breath painful in a constricted chest.