“Okay. Anything else?” Riley asks, and I shake my head. “Nothing?” he presses. “No sensations of being followed? No familiar faces around corners? Unusual calls or hang ups?”

“Nothing,” I assure him.

“Except the paint,” Lyle mentions.

“Paint?”

I shrug. “Someone tagged my car. But I was running some errands in a dicey section of the Valley. It was probably just teenagers. I mean, surely whoever sent the postcard and email didn’t follow me halfway across the San Fernando Valley just to spray-paint the word cunt on my car.”

“Probably not,” Riley says. “Or maybe that was a test run. Maybe your stalker was testing his own limits. He got close to your car last time. Next time he’ll try to get close to you.”

I shiver, then hug myself. Riley notices and comes to sit down next to me, his weight shifting the cushion so that I end up closer to him than is comfortable. Then he puts his hand on my thigh, the sensation warm and safe and more than a little distracting.

I scoot over, tugging my leg out from under his touch. He hesitates, then stands. And, dammit all, I not only feel like a raging bitch, but I desperately miss the comfort of that touch.

Lyle, thankfully, fills the awkward gap. “It has to be someone from the club. The timing. The image of the ball-gag. That’s the only explanation.”

“I’m not sure it’s the only,” Riley counters. “But it’s the most likely.”

“So you’re saying that some guy at the club saw me, became obsessed with me, and decided to stalk me?” The idea seems both utterly absurd and dead-on point.

“Pretty much,” Riley acknowledges.

“So how do we find him? Set up hidden cameras and wait for him to put another note under my wiper?”

“He won’t go that route again. Not now that you might be paying attention.”

“Then what? I just wait?”

“That’s one plan,” Riley says. “I think the better one is to draw him out.”

I hug the pillow closer. “How do I do that?”

“You don’t. We do.”

My instinct is to argue, but I tamp it back. Riley and I both know that I’m not tackling this on my own. “Okay, we. How do we draw him out?”

“Simple,” he says. “Tomorrow night, I’m going to take you to The Firehouse.”

Chapter Four

“I can’t believe you’re going to a BDSM club,” Aly says as she digs into the breakfast tacos I’ve brought with me. “I’m so jealous.” She falls back against her pillows with a sigh. “Then again, I’m so tired of being in bed that I’d be jealous if you told me you were going to Starbucks.”