There was a moment’s silence when her heart threatened to pry apart her ribs and leap out of her chest. She kept looking behind her like an idiot. She could swear she smelled gunpowder and Sydny’s blood on her clothes, though she had washed herself thoroughly before wiping her prints off everything she remembered touching. That meant retrieving the latex hood from under the sofa where she had thrown it. By that time, she’d heard the sirens of approaching police cars. In Sydny’s neighborhood, where a gunshot was never heard, the neighbors would have likely mistaken the shots for a car or truck backfiring. Julie was safely out the basement back door when they swarmed the building’s entryway.

“Orrin?”

She expelled a shuddering breath when the front door buzzed and she pushed through into the lobby. She took the elevator up to the sixth floor, went down the deserted and silent hallway. The door to his apartment stood open, and she stepped inside.

Orrin lived in Foggy Bottom, that odd area of D.C. that lay in the down low between George Washington University and Georgetown. It was inhabited almost exclusively by federal civil servants; he fit right in with all his neighbors, which must please him no end, Julie thought as she closed the door behind her.

Orrin padded out of the kitchen. He was in a thin robe, his feet bare. His face glistened with sweat; he must have just finished his turn on the rowing machine. He held a mug of hot tea, which he handed her. He did not comment on what she felt sure was her bedraggled state.

“Okay,” he said, after she had taken her first sip, “you come knocking on my door at six in the morning. What the hell’s up with you?”

She perched on a stool at the open-plan kitchen counter, curled her hands around the hot mug. Orrin looked no different from the last time they had had dinner. He was a sandy-haired man with a soft face, kind eyes, and a mild manner. Inoffensive was how she would sum him up.

But now that she was here, now that he had asked her the hundred-million-dollar question, she had no idea what to say. Gee, Orrin, I just shot a man—a high-level NSA agent, at that—after being introduced to bondage, discipline, sadomasochism by a new friend—a pole-dancer. The story would have seemed incredible to her if she hadn’t just lived through it. But she had to tell him something, didn’t she?

“A friend of mine was shot to death last night.” It was the truth, though hardly the whole truth, and certainly not the reason she had come to him at this hour instead of going home.