Deep down I knew something was wrong. I looked up at him and couldn’t understand for a moment. He was thirty pounds lighter, looked taller, and his eyes and hair were a different color. But it was him. Damian. Again.

I couldn’t feel myself breathe.

He didn’t say anything. He just gave me a smile and left.

I sat there stunned for a half hour trying to understand what had just happened.

Since then, Damian has kept showing up in my life. Each time with an almost unrecognizable look. It’s uncanny. I’ve tried to run his fingerprints, but he discovered a trick a long time ago of putting super glue over his fingertips and manually etching them with the tip of a pin.

After the encounter at the bookstore, I got a friend in the police department to run his prints from the coffee cup I swiped from the table. When the results came back, she asked if I got William Shatner’s autograph too when I met him. It was one of Damian’s little tricks. God knows how long it took him to etch that. He knew I had studied criminal justice and probably thought it would be fun to see how far I’d push my professional life into my personal.

He’s crazy. Certifiably insane.

I once ran an old photograph I have of him from college through a facial recognition database. It came back with a newspaper article from the 1980s of a teenager who was arrested for posing as a train conductor and taking a train cross-country to Seattle. A hundred-car-long train. Technically speaking, it was the biggest theft of an object in history.

His name was left out because he was a minor and the records were sealed. The grin was unmistakably his. When I asked him about it, he just replied that he’s had lots of different careers.

That’s what Damian does when he’s not pursuing me. He pretends to be other people. The role he wants more than anything is to be my lover again.

But that’s never going to happen. He’s dangerous.

“Why are you here?” My knuckles are white on the grip of my gun.

Damian points to the television. “I just want to make sure you have sunscreen. I’d hate for something to happen to that beautiful skin when you go there.”

14

I’M TOO DISTRACTED by Damian sitting on my couch to realize what he’s talking about.

He takes a sip from a beer he stole from my fridge. “When I saw that Michigan trick, I figured you’d show up eventually. I could have sworn I saw you in the news footage in the background. I’m glad you’re living up to at least part of your potential.”

“Get out.” I don’t point the gun at him, but I give it a flick with my wrist.

He looks away from the television and stares at me. His eyes are almost ice blue. That’s the reason he often uses contacts to color them. His one unforgettable trait. His gaze drifts down to the gun and smiles. “Jessica, if I could die right now from your bullet, looking at you like that, I can’t think of a better way to go.”