The young woman’s voice carried a weighted urgency, as if her question held an understood significance. Caitlin squinted against the glare of the lights but couldn’t read her facial expression. “I’m always working on a story, but I’m not here on assignment, if that’s what you’re asking. Something about your tone leads me to believe you have a specific follow-up question.”

The girl nodded. “Allow me to clarify. Are you planning to look for Angela Chapman while you’re in town?”

The name sounded familiar, but Caitlin couldn’t make an association. “No, my motives for being here are purely personal.”

She looked over at Mary, saw her twenty years earlier, the apartment they’d shared, the fun. A flash of her last week on campus scared the nostalgia away. She squeezed the mic like it wanted to run too.

“The diploma, for one thing. Quite an honor after all this time. I also promised my agent I’d sell a few books, so here’s a shameless plug for my signing tomorrow morning.”

She could stop there, excuse herself by being witty and polite, but something about the girl’s eyes said, Embrace the moment—and Mary had told her to be herself.

“You’re correct, though. I am working on something. You see, twenty years ago, a boy—” She looked down, noticed the university’s nearly two-hundred-year-old seal inlayed into the podium, returned to the mic. “Not a boy—a young man I knew and trusted took me to an abandoned limestone cutting facility five miles from here, raped me, and left me for dead. So I’ve returned to finish that story.”

She gripped the podium, well aware of the serious silence caused by her admission.

“Plus, Mary said there’d be wine and cheese.”

Chapter 3

CHAPTER

3

MARY CAUGHT UP with Caitlin fifty feet from the safety of her hotel room. “I left as soon as I could. Is that really why you disappeared? Caitie, why didn’t you tell me?”

Caitlin kept walking. “You had the GRE, graduation, that Chris guy—pick one. Plus, I signed something.”

Mary matched her pace. “Who cares? Let’s talk about this.”

Caitlin slid her keycard into her door lock. The light went green. She turned back to her friend.

“I’m fine, Mary.”

Mary didn’t have to say anything. The pity on her face did the job.

“Okay, I’m not fine. Thought I was—apparently not.” She heard the mechanical whir of the lock, pushed too late. “Damn it.” She worked the keycard again, pushed the door open. “I went straight to the hospital, did the kit, called the cops, and left town. He did two of his four years, got out, then killed a family in a car accident—drunk driving, his fault. He’s back in prison where he belongs. So don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”