It was cold by the lake, and Susan’s skin hummed from the chill. A few fall leaves, caught in the wind, scratched along the patio, and then finally flitted into the pool and were still. Susan lowered her mask and pressed herself against a tree trunk, hoping it would hide her silhouette.

She kept her eyes on the stairs.

Sure enough, he came.

He had been following her through the party, always at the edges of her peripheral vision. Someone else might not have noticed. It was crowded, the men were all in tuxedos, wearing masks; it was dark. But Susan wasn’t just anyone—she was a reporter. She paid attention. She noticed people. Especially when they were wrestler-sized tough guys who had recently kidnapped her.

Cooper took the stairs casually, with the easy gait of someone not in a hurry, not bothered, not stalking someone. He had changed into a tuxedo—nothing fancy, and a decade out of date—and he was wearing a simple black mask, like a comic-book henchman. When he got to the bottom of the stairs he stopped. Susan didn’t move. The bark was rough against her shoulder blades. She could feel Cooper’s gaze searching for her in the darkness.

Suddenly the boisterousness of the party seemed very far away.

“Watch out for snakes,” Cooper called.

Susan had to bite her lip to keep from whimpering. She stood on her tiptoes and scanned the dark ground around her for any sign of movement.

“Leo’s brother Jeremy liberated two pet Burmese pythons a few years ago, and no one’s seen them since,” Cooper called.

Susan thought she heard a slithering in the dark. She tightened her grip on the wand of the mask, and wondered if it could be used to fend off a python.

“Pythons will wind around tree branches and drop right on top of you,” Cooper said.

It was too much. Susan leapt forward, away from the trees, and stumbled out of the foliage onto the paving-stone pool deck. Cooper chuckled, the silver in his teeth glinting in the lamplight.

Susan quickly checked behind her for snakes, saw none, and then turned back to Cooper. “Why are you following me?” she demanded.

He was still fifteen feet away, and he didn’t make an effort to get closer.

“It’s a big island,” he said pleasantly. “I didn’t want you to get lost.”

“I want to see Leo,” Susan said. She brushed at some of the tiny bits of leaves that were stuck to her dress. “Or I’m leaving.”

“Okay,” Cooper agreed.

That was too easy. “Right now,” Susan said, to be clear.