“You should open your gift.”

“Right. Yeah.” Kitty nodded and looked at the brightly wrapped box. She stooped, placed her hands on either side, and tested its weight—even gave it a little shake. She felt something roll heavily inside.

“Did you buy me a watermelon?” she asked.

“It’s better than that.”

“Ooh, exciting.” Kitty pulled the end of the ribbon and the bow came untied. Johan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his long fingers linked. Kitty looked at him. His shoulders had crept up again, and she wondered if she’d read him wrong. Maybe his stiffness was down to awkwardness and nerves. She’d seen it in men before. They’d danced skittishly around the edges before making their move.

Was that the real reason for this visit?

Kitty had been running canary for Johan for almost two months, and during that time had grown comfortable around him, something she would never have believed possible after their first meeting. He’d stroked her cheek on occasion, or touched her hair, and although this was inappropriate, it never felt seedy. Even after Barrett Lorne’s party, when she might have slept with him if he’d pursued it, he’d dropped her outside her apartment without so much as a peck on the cheek. I’ll call, he’d said. The perfect gentleman. Kitty had begun to believe that she wasn’t his type, but now here he was, unannounced and out of sorts. Perhaps he felt that, after two months, the groundwork had been established and it was time to push for more.

If so, Kitty hoped her rejecting these advances would not damage their relationship.

She pulled the ribbon from around the gift, then made quick work of the paper, tearing and crumpling. Beneath, the mystery continued: a plain, rigid box with a lid that had been secured with little rectangles of sticky tape. Kitty peeled the first of these away, rolling it into a ball between her thumb and forefinger.

“You really shouldn’t have,” she said, working on the second piece of tape.

“I really should.”

One corner of the lid popped up just a touch and she got her first sense that something was wrong. It was the smell, wafting from inside the box, bloody and thick. The stench of spoiled meat.

Kitty frowned, looked at Johan.

“Don’t you just love surprises?” he said.

Kitty lifted the lid and her first reaction was to scream, but there was nothing to scream with. Her airway had collapsed, drawing everything inside her chest into a hard, frosty ball. She gagged and fell backward onto her ass, pushing herself away from the table, from the box.

“You said I could trust you, Kitty,” Johan said. “You lied.”