“It’s been a long week.” Erin forced her nerves to settle, knowing he would hear every nuance. Because she loved him, because he’d done the unthinkable one stormy California night, she would do for him what no one had for her. Protect him. She would keep him away from New Orleans and the menace that taunted her. With a quick laugh, she explained, “I guess the phone has static. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you while the sun was up. You keep such interesting hours.”

“All the hours need tending, love,” he replied. “How’s the Big Easy?”

“Hot.” Erin sank into the sofa cushions and cradled the teacup in her lap. “Are you in New York?”

“I’m around,” was the noncommittal reply. “Now tell me what’s really going on.”

The whole truth, so rarely told, spilled out. She leaned forward to set the cup down, wincing when the delicate china rattled against its saucer. “Someone knows about Nathan.”

The quiet oath singed the phone wires. “Who?”

Erin shook her head. “I don’t know. I got a note on Sunday, with five obituaries. The note had my name on it.”

“Analise?”

“Yes. And there was more.” Quickly she explained her theory of the obituaries to a silent Sebastian. “It’s a stretch, I know, but I’m certain I’m right. Only a person with an abnormal affinity for words and puzzles would have seen the connections. A freak—”

“Erin,” Sebastian interrupted patiently, “don’t do this to yourself. Don’t let Nathan inside your head.”

“He’s always there. He never leaves. No matter what I do, he’s always inside my head.” The sob caught in her throat. “I just want to be free of him.”

Sebastian heard the tears, felt his heart wrench. He remembered a younger Erin, a daring little girl called Analise with doting, if distracted, parents. They had marveled at their brilliant child and despaired of understanding her. Laboratories and institutes and universities had studied the four-year-old brain that absorbed Latin like a sponge. At five, she’d mastered Greek, while his ten-year-old mind grappled with dangling participles.

By fifteen, she was on her own, as was he, her parents and his mother killed in a plane crash in Belize. When he’d traveled to California to reconnect, the girl he’d known had been smothered, but not erased. She’d found the will to break free. Whether she called herself Erin or Jane Doe, she would always be Analise. A survivor.

“You are Analise. Changing your name doesn’t change who you are. Who you’ve always been.”

The denial burst out of her. “I don’t want to be who I was then! Meek. Simpering. Useless.”

“You deserve to be happy. You’ve paid your dues. No one holds you responsible.”

“I hold me responsible.”

“Your therapist worked with you on this and—”