She blushed. Crazy. Sex had never been a big problem for her, but by the same token had never been really that big a deal, either. She realized now that she hadn’t truly desired her former lovers because she hadn’t felt anything for them like what she was feeling now.

She desired Joe. A lot. Heat filled her down to her fingertips. Her womb contracted when she felt his penis move, exactly as if he had been inside her instead of her sitting on his lap separated by layers of clothing.

His jaw muscles clenched. They both knew what was happening.

“Go on,” he said. “I need to know what you saw.”

She’d been studying his face, all the minute changes in it as he went from fierce protector to man. Absolutely fascinating. He seemed to be more self-disciplined than she was, though, because it took her a second to realize what he said.

All this heat had served an important function. Isabel didn’t feel so lost and alone and crazy. Joe’s physical presence gave weight and heft to her memory, grounding her.

Isabel sat up straighter, brushing his penis again. His hand had gone from cupping the back of her head to cupping her neck and she tilted her head slightly.

“I was looking for something using that flashlight you gave me. It’s really bright.”

“It’s supposed to be,” Joe said.

“I went into the bedroom. I needed something and instead of turning on the bedside lamp or the ceiling light, I used the flashlight. It crossed the window and that’s when I saw him. It.”

“Why do you say it? You couldn’t tell the sex?”

Isabel took her time. This was important, if he was going to believe her. “It because it didn’t quite look human. Now that I think of it, it was probably a ski mask, but in that moment, that split second, it was like this—this thing outside my window had no human features. No nose, no mouth, just black blankness, and those eyes.”

Joe frowned. “What about the eyes? What was wrong with them?”

This was the tricky part. “They, um. They weren’t human eyes. That’s what went through my mind. The immediate overall effect was alien.” She shuddered. “That’s when I thought I was losing it. But they weren’t alien eyes. It or he or she was wearing some funny kind of goggles. Like steampunk goggles.”

Joe looked blank. “Steampunk?”

“Yeah.” She ventured half a smile. “It’s a literary genre. Sort of Victoriana with a steam engine vibe. It’s also a look. A style. Men in fancy Edwardian waistcoats and women with leather bustiers.” Joe seemed more and more lost. “Think The Golden Compass. And the goggles, the eyepieces, look like those goggles the Arctic explorers wore in all those old photographs.”

“Goggles.” Joe had been looking up and to the right to envision what she was saying but suddenly his gaze dropped and locked with hers. He let out a harsh breath. His body was tight with tension. Every muscle was taut, delineated. She felt his shoulder muscles under her hands flex and harden. “Fuck,” he breathed.

“Pardon?”

“That bastard was wearing night vision goggles!”

“What?”

“You didn’t see a monster. You saw a guy in a ski mask with night vision. They are special eyepieces that magnify any ambient light and allow soldiers to see in the dark. It’s military hardware. It shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians. Did you strip naked?” he asked, mouth a thin grim line.

“Yes.” She shivered. “The room was dark but I guess he saw...everything.”

“Do you always keep the lights off in your bedroom?”

“No. I have a small reading light on my bedside table. I have a ceiling light—” She stopped, fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. “But you know all about my ceiling light because you put it up.”

“Yeah. Do you use it much at night?”

Isabel looked up, thought. “No. I mostly have my bedside light on.”

“So if someone’s been looking in on you, watching you, he expects the room to be dimly lit. If he’s been watching you, he’d expect you to be absolutely unaware of his existence. He can watch everything you do even in the dimmest light. Even in the dark. You went into your room and kept it dark and then used a flashlight that picked him out. And, by the way, that flashlight would have blinded him with night vision gear. It would have been like looking at the sun for him.”

Isabel stared at Joe, disturbed and queasy. “So...you think someone has been...watching me?” She swallowed bile. The idea was horrible.

Joe didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, his voice was firm. “Motion sensors are going up all around your house and you will have monitors. No one will ever sneak up on you again, guaranteed.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He nodded. “There’s something else you need to know, honey.”

The endearment just slipped out of him. Isabel didn’t think he even noticed. But she did. It didn’t feel like one of those words players used as a placeholder for a name. Joe knew her name. That honey had come out of his subconscious.

She watched his eyes. They were dark brown, with striations of a slightly lighter brown and they seemed to absorb the light. They were eyes that saw everything and betrayed a keen intelligence.

“What do I need to know?”

He studied her face for a moment longer and Isabel became uneasy. This was bad news coming and she’d had a lifetime’s worth of bad news lately.

“I got an email about you today.”

It felt like a punch to the stomach. All the wind went out of her. Her mouth fell open. “You got an email about me?” The bottom dropped out of her world. Nothing made any sense anymore. “What—what did it say?”

Was it a journalist looking for dirt? Was someone trying to ruin what was left of her life? But whoever had sent the email had sent it to Joe. Not to her. After the Massacre, Isabel had received all kinds of hate mail. There’d also been lots of condolence emails but also tons of political hate mail, to the effect that her godless family had gotten its just reward. Trolls crawling out of the woodwork to tear her down at her lowest point. She changed her email address and that was when she decided to move to Portland and change her name.

She’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if the hate mail continued, it was going kill her. She’d been half-dead and this wall of hatred, of vitriol was going to finish her off.

So she braced herself for whatever Joe was going to say. Somehow someone had latched on to the fact that Joe was being kind to her. And they wanted to destroy that. Leave her as alone as before.

She was ready for anything. For Joe to say that the email called her a whore, a bitch, a girl-child of privilege. That she wasn’t fit for decent folk.

That had been the baseline of the emails she’d received. An avalanche of them, happy that her father would never be president.

She held her breath.

“The email was simple,” he said. “It said protect Isabel.”

Her heart stuttered and her breath blew out in a whoosh. “It said what?”

“Protect Isabel. Two words. And we were unable to find the source. Not even Felicity was able to find the source and Felicity is the atom bomb of IT. Someone seriously does not want to be found. But that someone also wants me to protect you. To keep you from harm.”

Isabel watched his eyes and saw the truth of what he was saying. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand. There’s no one left in the world who cares what happens to me.”

Joe’s face turned even grimmer as he took her chin and turned her head to fully face him. “That’s not true, Isabel. Not anymore. I care what happens to you.”

And he kissed her.

* * *

Fuck fuck fuck!

The bitch made him! Kearns stumbled his way back to his vehicle at a fast walk, still half-blinded. Luckily, training kicked in.

He knew how to walk without calling attention to himself. He knew exactly how to go in a mile-eating stride that looked normal but was about 30 percent faster than a normal walk. He knew how to unobtrusively avoid sources of light. He knew how to obscure his face when the odd car drove by this late at night in this residential neighborhood.