He’d given her a key to the gate, so she could come and go without having to stand there waiting for him to open it. Normally, he didn’t even remember to lock it on a regular basis, and neither did his neighbor, but Sara needed it locked. It was a crutch, an illusion of safety that she needed to have right now, and he respected that. She had been through a hell of a lot, and unlike him, she wasn’t immortal. She could die.

It took him a minute to realize that she wasn’t coming up the staircase to his apartment. He listened, allowing himself to utilize his heightened senses, and after deciphering movement, he knew she had actually stopped in the courtyard. She was walking around on the old bricks, pulling out a chair at the wrought iron table that had been in the same spot for a decade.

Gabriel stood up and went into his bedroom. He had washed the streak of blood off the glass, and the window was closed again against the August heat. But he could see her through the pane, sitting at the table, reading something from a manila envelope in her lap. She had propped her feet up on another chair, tucking her yellow skirt neatly around her legs. Her blond hair spilled back over her shoulders, and she reached up and buried her hands in it, tousling and piling it up on top of her head, before letting it drop again.

The sun shone across her legs, but the building shadowed her cheek and nose.

Without giving any thought to it, Gabriel went and got his camera and, as quietly as possible, lifted the window. Angling the lens down, to capture the feeling of watching her from above, he tested the light with several shots. Then he shifted to the left and zoomed in on her face, wanting her profile, wanting to capture the curve of her sensuous lip, the strength of her jaw, the delicacy of her petite nose, which struggled to hold her sunglasses in place. He clicked, over and over, moving in and out, shifting from her face to the whole image of Sara at Study, shoulders tense as she bent over, in contrast to the relaxed posture of her lower body.