“Hey, Caitlin.” His friendly voice called out from behind her. “I think you forgot your phone.”

She turned, saw him jogging toward her with a mobile device in his hand.

Lakshmi’s favorite acting teacher, the one who did makeup on horror films in Hollywood.

She turned back to the car, saw her phone sitting in the center console.

Her heart dropped into her stomach. Branford had been at the signing.

The guy with the goatee darker than his hair and the kind of horrible scars people looked away from.

“Must have slipped out of your pocket when you sat in the chair,” he said, only seconds away now.

She could be misreading coincidences, wrong, or just plain crazy, but every hair on her arms stood on end. No time to get to the driver’s side of the car or to crawl in through the passenger’s door, not even keys to scratch with—only the fob in her hand. Fuck it, if she was wrong, she’d apologize.

Caitlin planted her left leg and kicked straight back waist-high with her right foot.

Her kick made contact, full-force.

She spun around, saw Branford stumbling backward holding his ribs, eight feet away, the phone still in his hand.

Ready with an apology, she waited for some sign of outrage, or even surprise, but Branford shook his head and stood up straight, no more smile.

“What gave me away?” he said, the charm in his voice replaced with cold calculation, the welcoming light in his eyes now dark.

Caitlin shifted to her right.

He matched her position, fast, like Peter Pan’s shadow.

She shifted back left, he did the same, then smiled and pressed the button on the side of the phone. Sparks arced between two contacts at the tip of the anti-rape stun device.

“This doesn’t have to hurt,” Branford shouted over the frantic snapping.

“Yes,” Caitlin said, “it sure fucking does.”

He lunged forward, stun gun out.

Caitlin ducked left, threw a roundhouse kick toward his side, made contact again, but weakly, a push instead of a snap. He swung the phone toward her leg. She pulled away, avoiding the shock, but tumbled backward and landed close to the front of the parked car. She got up fast, put another five feet between them, her hands in fists.

“Shit,” she said, her eyes stuck on the key fob sitting in the dirt where she fell.

He followed her gaze, quick-stepped closer to the fob, and reactivated the stun gun.

No way she could get to her key or her phone. With that thing ready to shock the daylights out of her, no way she could beat Branford in a fight. She caught her breath. The only good thing about all that time she’d spent running from her past was that now she could run very, very fast.

She turned and sprinted into the cornfield.