“I have a gravity-laden heart,” Tessa began. Then she let the words write themselves in her mind, and she spoke them softly as they did: “Dragging me deeper and deeper into myself. Only the orbit of a much greater sun could ever lift me high enough for me to breathe freedom air.”

“How is that a poem? It doesn’t even rhyme.”

“You are so lame. Poems don’t have to rhyme.”

“Do one that rhymes.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ha. You can’t think of one.”

“I could if I wanted to.”

“You’re stalling.”

As Tessa thought about it, words came to her: Dark dreams awaken and rise in the night. What whips can tame them? What chains restrain them? What harness can rein them or quiet their bite?

But she didn’t say that to Candice. Instead, she just said, “You’re right, I was stalling. I can’t do it.”

Now, Tessa looked at the words she’d just written about barbed wire and an isolated heart. Yeah, it could use some work, but it was enough for the moment.

She considered a title for it and ended up with a choice between “Loneliness” and “Love.”

She decided to go with wishful thinking and chose “Love.”

13

Julianne lit another cigarette and waited across the street from the address Blake had given her in Ozone Park, a neighborhood in Queens that she noticed contained mostly single-family households and not just condos or townhouses.

No lights were on in the man’s home. Maybe he’d retired to bed early. Maybe he was out and would be returning later.

Blake had told her to contact him tonight. “Prudence,” he’d said somewhat enigmatically, and she wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting at, but she didn’t want to miss her chance if tonight was the best time to connect with him.

She was betting on the fact that he was out and about. If he was in bed there was no rush. She could make her way up there and break into his condo if necessary anytime tonight.

Over the last year, she’d pretty much given up smoking, but there aren’t too many reasons you can stand on a street corner in New York City and look around the neighborhood and not draw attention to yourself.

So, she revisited her old habit.

She hadn’t been certain that she wanted to kill Blake until she’d met up with him at the restaurant. He had a dismissive air about him that she did not like. Killing those whom she knew wasn’t a moral dilemma for her. The first two people she’d murdered were both people she loved—her fiancé and her best friend, who he’d cheated on her with.