She had expected it to be dark. Instead, it was lit by several security monitors hanging on the wall over an L-shaped computer desk. Staring, she felt along the wall by the door until her fingers encountered a switch. She flipped it, and bright, overhead light flooded the room.

A large floor safe sat in a corner opposite the desk. The desktop held a coffee mug and a scattering of papers and files, and a computer was hooked up to two more monitors. Absently, she retrieved her coffee and took a sip of the dark, bitter brew as she approached the desk.

Her phone! Snatching at it, she tried to power it up, but it was dead. Upon closer inspection, she discovered the phone card was missing. Frustration gnawed, and she tossed it back on the desk. Then her name leaped out from the papers and files.

Slowly, she sank into the desk chair, set her mug down, picked up the manila file that bore her name, and began to flip through it. Childhood background. The name of her high school and a list of her friends. Information on her parents. Her father’s date of death. Their address. Molly’s college transcripts. The address of her house. The list of places where she had either volunteered or worked.

The file slipped out of her fingers, and she scrambled to look at the other papers and files. There was a file on Austin and another one on Sherman & Associates. And another file that looked like a list of employee records for the district attorney’s office. Another one on local judges. That one had a sticky note on it that said GO DEEPER?

There were other files, but the information they contained had no meaning to her, nor any overall pattern that she could understand. Finally she sat back and drank the rest of her coffee while she stared at the images on the security monitors. After a moment she recognized the scenes as the property surrounding the house.

She was still sitting there when a dark Audi appeared. It jumped off one monitor and onto another as it swung around to the back of the house. When it stopped, Josiah’s long, powerful body unfolded from the driver’s seat. He carried several grocery bags to the back door.

She listened to the sound of the door opening and closing, then footsteps on the stairs. They paused, then continued more slowly.

The fiery, dark essence of his presence filled the doorway at her back.

“I see you’ve been busy,” he said expressionlessly. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wanted my phone back. Not that it did me any good.” She swung the chair around to confront him. “Why did you destroy the phone card?”

Exhaustion and anger stamped his hard features. His gaze was sharp like knives carved from amber. “Even if you have your GPS turned off, the location of your phone can still be traced.”