And therein was the problem. Mary didn’t know John. She didn’t know him well enough to predict his propensities or inclinations. If she’d known him well, maybe she wouldn’t have been so shocked by his words to Tyler. So appalled. So embarrassed.

She tossed and turned for another hour before she started to drift.

A noise brought her back, dimly, to the surface of sleep. She sifted back down, warm and soft. But then the noise came again. She opened her eyes.

Sat up.

That sounded like it was coming from downstairs. From her shop. There! The tinkling of glass. Scuffling.

Mary scrambled to the end of her bed and grabbed her phone, tugging on her robe over her nightshirt, even though sweat had sprung up down her spine.

She was frozen. Call the cops? Go down there by herself? She walked carefully across her bedroom floor, avoiding the creaky spots. She stopped in her tracks and listened for more sounds. Nothing.

Then a crash so loud that she couldn’t help but yelp. She covered her mouth with her hands, staring into nothing, her heart’s fists beating against the glass pane in her chest. Oh, God. There was someone in her store and they were destroying things. She had to call the cops.

Mary made it to the kitchen, somehow feeling unsafe in her own bedroom, and once again froze solid.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up to her apartment was unmistakable. Mary peered out toward her front door and saw that she’d pulled the chain and cocked the dead bolt before bed. They would have to break down her door in order to get in. Even so, she scampered back toward her bathroom, the only other lockable room in her apartment, and locked the door behind her. She sat down hard on the edge of the bathtub and called the police.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT WAS A two-shirt kind of Friday. John had fully sweated through the button-down he’d worn to court that morning and was in the bathroom across the hall from his office, shirtless, and swiping cold water over the back of his neck, when he heard Richie’s voice in the hallway.

“Hey! What’re you doing here?”

A woman’s voice, more muffled than Richie’s, echoed back and then faded away as they stepped into the office.

Wondering who it was, John dried off with paper towels, reapplied some of the deodorant he kept in his bag and quickly buttoned himself into his clean shirt. Now he had to get out of this sweltering bathroom before he melted again.

He shouldered into his office, absurdly grateful for the measly five-degree differential provided by their wheezing, ancient window unit.