He’d rather be paranoid than risk people hurting Catie by taking away her choice in what she wanted to share and what she didn’t. Like with her prostheses. She took them off at the children’s camp all the time when she gave talks to the kids. Never once, however, had she posted social media shots of herself without her prostheses.

“Because soon as it goes online,” she’d said to him once, “there’s a high chance a creep will find it and add a fetishizing comment, and yeah, no thanks.” She’d shaken her head. “I see it with Posey’s profile—she doesn’t care, but I get so angry for her. I’d probably go nuclear if anyone pulled the same shit with me.”

“What does Posey say?”

“She sees it as being herself in all her glory and fuck the creeps, which I agree with—but she also accepts my viewpoint. We’re different people with different thoughts on the whole thing. No one has a right to what we don’t choose to reveal.”

Danny would punch out a photographer himself before he let anyone steal that choice from her. “Thanks, man,” he said to the cab driver when they pulled up to a stop outside the apartment building. “I know it’s slow going on the roads today.”

“No problem.” The big Tongan man smiled, his teeth white against the black of the neat beard that framed his mouth. “You mind autographing this notepad? My boy plays rugby. He’ll go nuts—and it’s his birthday in a week, so I figure I can give it to him then.”

“Sure, no problem.” Danny paid the fare, took the notepad. “If you give me your address, I’ll send you a bunch of team stuff for him too.”

This time the driver’s smile eclipsed the sunshine that lit up the snow.

Danny carried that blast of happiness with him as he walked into the building through a coded door for which Catie had given him the number. She’d also given him a keycard to get into the penthouse elevator and the access code for the apartment itself.

Jacqueline did not piss around when it came to security.

When he entered the apartment, it was to find Catie’s bedroom door open, silence a lingering beat in the air. “Catie!”

Nothing.

Taking out his phone, he texted her: Are you alive?

Ha ha. I needed hair goop for tonight, and I ran out of mascara. What, you miss me?