Eric didn’t know what words should come next, either, so he held up a hand of good-bye and retreat, backing up out of the kitchen, the apartment, and Scarlett’s life in general.

It took her almost forty-five minutes to calm back down, most of which was spent on the phone to Dakota.

“Let’s have him killed!” Dakota suggested cheerfully.

“I’m serious,” Scarlett said. “Help me. I’m under a table.”

“Is that a Shakespeare expression? Like, ‘Gadzooks! I am under a table, milord! Prithee, handeth me the pointy stick for to stab the cad!’ Is that what you mean?”

“I mean I’m under a table.”

This was true. Scarlett was crouching on the fluffy white rug under the unused dining table on the side of the living room. She had no idea why she was doing this, except that it seemed kind of safe there.

“He came to see me,” Scarlett said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Why did he come to see me?”

There was a long pause on Dakota’s end of the line.

“He didn’t actually come to see you,” she finally said. “Think about it. Where do you work now?”

“For Mrs. Amberson.”

“Who is an…”

“Agent,” Scarlett said. How had she been so stupid? Eric wasn’t standing around in front of Mrs. Amberson’s apartment building hoping to see Scarlett—he wanted to see her boss. He wanted to see an agent. The fact that he had run into Scarlett was purely accidental. Her brain was so hopped-up on hormones and adrenaline that she couldn’t see what was going on.

“You okay?” Dakota asked after a long pause.

“Fine,” Scarlett replied. “I’d better go.”

“Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Thanks.”

She hung up and dropped her phone into the thickly piled rug and willed herself to think. So he had come here. So they had spoken. So he really just wanted to talk to her boss. Big deal. So what if she had to wrap her arms around herself to make the quivering feeling stop, or that she wanted to run out and find him, follow him, see where he went and who he talked to and if the girls in his class were as pretty as they were in Scarlett’s nightmares. She had seen him, and she had lived. That made her strong, right? You didn’t win the war until you faced your foe, and she had just done some full-on foe-facing, which was both brave and alliterative.

The intercom buzzed, startling Scarlett so much that she popped up her head and whacked it on the underside of the table. Downstairs, Murray had to be holding his finger down on the buzzer on purpose, because it was a solid, unbroken sound, one that could rip any thought in two. No wonder Dog Murray looked the way he did.