I’d been shocked at first—and then a bit turned on. A fact I’d confessed to no one, and fully intended to keep to myself until the end of time. But secret or not, it was true, and my sex ached right now from nothing more than the memory of it.

“So you didn’t participate, but you were visible?”

I nod.

“And then?”

“And then we left.” I swallow. “And the next morning I found the postcard underneath the windshield wiper of my car.”

“Postcard,” he repeats. “What did it say?”

I lick my lips, then recite, “Whore. You’re mine now.” As I speak, Lyle passes Riley his phone where, I know, he keeps a picture of the postcard.

Riley glances at it, his brow furrowed and his mouth curved down into a frown. “Pencil?”

Lyle shakes his head. “I had a friend in the police department take a look. Detective Garrison. Dean Garrison.”

“I’ve worked with him,” Riley says. “Good man.”

Lyle nods, but continues about the postcard. “According to Garrison, someone traced the words onto the postcard using carbon paper.”

Riley nods slowly. “And the image of lips on the other side. Rocky Horror lips. Which might or might not be relevant. No fingerprints?” he asks me.

“No,” I say. “We didn’t check right away—I thought it was creepy but not scary at first. Just someone jerking my chain, you know? I didn’t even put it together with The Firehouse, honestly. Not until the email came. That’s when Lyle had Garrison come by. And he took it to the lab so they could dust for prints. Not a one. Well, except for mine.”

“Where’s the email?”

“Next photo,” Lyle says, and Riley uses his thumb to scroll through. I don’t need to walk to him to know what he’s seeing. The image is burned into my mind. A woman on her knees, a collar around her neck, her hands bound behind her and a ball gag in her mouth. Beneath the image, in a handwriting-style font, the message announces, This is how you should be. Bitch, bitch, you’re mine, little bitch.

Remembering, I hug myself.

“I can see why you’d be disturbed,” Riley says, and I exhale in relief, only then realizing that I’d been afraid he was going to say the very thing I keep repeating to Lyle. That it’s nothing. Just bullshit. No big deal.

Except that isn’t true, and I know it. And, weirdly, the fact that Riley is validating that horrible reality makes me feel better.

“The email address?”

“Bogus,” Lyle says. “I have a friend in Austin who’s a whiz at that kind of thing. Noah said it was set up on a computer at a library in Northridge. After that, nothing.”