She never went barefoot in the apartment.

Instead of the slippers, though, the dress she’d worn yesterday, a frilly, floral number, lay spread out beneath her dangling feet.

The front hem was drawn up, almost to the décolletage, as if the garment were flashing her.

Wait a minute . . . Talese had a memory—more hazy than distinct—of tossing the garment into the hamper before her nighttime routine.

Talese qualified her narrative now. The slippers weren’t where she thought she’d left them. The dress wasn’t in the hamper where she thought she’d tossed it.

Maybe Draco, the bartender, always a flirt, had been a little more generous than usual.

Was the drink count, possibly, 2.5 on the scale?

Careful, girl. You need to watch that.

As always, upon waking, the phone.

She turned toward the bedside table.

It wasn’t there.

No landline for her, her mobile was her only link at night. She always kept it near and charged. The umbilical, attached to the wall plug, was present, but no phone.

Jesus . . . What’s going on?

Then she saw the slippers. The pink fuzzy things were across the room, each on either side of, and facing, a small wooden chair. It had been scooted closer to the bed than she normally kept it. The slippers were facing the chair in a way that was almost eerily obscene—as if they’d been worn by somebody whose legs were spread and who was sitting on a lap.

“No,” Talese gasped, now spotting what was on the floor beside the chair: a plate with a half-eaten cookie on it.

Her heart thrummed fast; her breath grew shallow. Somebody’d been in the apartment last night! They’d rearranged her clothes, eaten the cookie.

Not six feet away from her!

The phone, the phone . . . where’s the goddamn phone?

Talese reached for the dress on the floor.

Then froze. Don’t! He—she figured the intruder would have been male—had touched it.

My God . . . She ran to her closet and pulled on jeans and an NYU sweatshirt, then stepped into the first pair of sneakers she found.

Out! Get out now! The neighbors, the police . . .

Fighting back tears from fright, she started out of the bedroom, then noticed that one of her dresser drawers was partially open. It was where she kept her underwear. She’d noted something boldly colorful inside.

She approached slowly, pulled it fully open and looked down. She gasped and finally the tears broke free.

On top of her panties was a page from a newspaper. It wasn’t one she read, so he would have brought it with him. Written on it, in lipstick—the shade that she favored, Fierce Pink—were three words:

Reckoning.

—The Locksmith

Annabelle Talese turned to sprint to the front door. She got about ten feet before she stopped fast.

She’d noticed three things:

One was that the butcher block knife holder, sitting on the island in the small kitchen, had a blank slot, the upper right-hand corner, where the largest blade had rested.