Vin was in her mind…in her mind and speaking in that strange voice: He’s coming for you. He’s coming for you.

When he’d gone into that bizarre trance in the locker room, the message that had come out of his mouth had been terrifying, but his fixated eyes had been even worse. And her first response? It hadn’t been, What the hell are you talking about? No, she’d thought to herself, How do you know?

Having had no idea what to do or how to handle herself, much less him, she’d bolted out of the locker room and told his friend to go in there.

She looked down at the business card in her hand. Turning it over for the hundredth time, she stared at what he’d written: I’m sorry.

She believed that—

The ring tone that lit off beside her scared the hell out of her, making her jerk so badly the card flipped from her hand and went flying.

Catching her breath, she reached for the cell phone that was next to her on the sofa, but the call failed before she could see who it was and answer it. Just as well—she didn’t feel like talking to anyone and it was likely just a wrong number.

The little Nokia was the only phone she had. The one in the kitchen that was wired into the wall didn’t have a dial tone because she had never activated the line. The thing was, however private you could make a residential phone number, people could still penetrate the identity shield more easily than they could a mobile, and she was all about anonymity—which was why she had looked only at rentals that had utilities included in the monthly rate: It meant that the bills remained in her landlord’s name, instead of being switched to hers.

As she put her phone down, she thought of the past, to the way things had been before she’d tried to leave Mark. Back then, her son’s name had been Sean. Her name had been Gretchen. Their last name had been Capricio.

And she was actually a real, live redhead. Unlike Gina at the club.

Marie-Terese Boudreau was a total lie, with the only thing she’d kept true being her Catholic faith. That was it. Well, that and the debt with the lawyers and the private investigator.

At the time, after everything had gone down, she’d had the option of entering into the witness-protection program. But cops could be bought—God knew her ex and his capos had taught her that. So she’d done what she’d had to with the district attorney, and when Mark had pled out, she’d been officially free to run east, getting as far away from Las Vegas as she could.