He didn’t know what to do. He’d been lashing out, acting on impulse for the past couple of days. But there was no satisfaction in instant messages—he couldn’t see her getting them, could only imagine the look on her face. Her curiosity about who it was, whether the messages meant anything. Was she in danger? Was someone trying to scare her? She wouldn’t know for sure. He’d designed the messages so she wouldn’t.

And she wouldn’t overreact. Not Antonia Winter, M.D. Robert had watched her work for almost three years. She wasn’t one to panic. Her coolness under stress was just all the more reason to build to a crescendo and see her quivering with fear, incoherent with it, begging for her life.

He thought a moment, watching the two in the restaurant laughing with the waiter. Was that really what he wanted? Dr. Bitch begging for her life? Was he willing to go that far? Farther?

Tonight in the parking garage—brilliant. He’d heard her stop and gasp. But, still, he couldn’t see her.

And he wanted to, he realized. He really, really wanted to.

He’d taken the subway from the hospital. He could still smell oil from where he’d sat on the concrete floor in the parking garage. How had he missed a damn oil slick the size of the Exxon Valdez spill? Fucking thing was huge. But he hadn’t dared to move. He’d spotted Antonia Winter, M.D., Dr. Winter, the bitch doctor—he’d spotted her walking to her car, her heels click-clicking on the concrete. She was in a rush to see the wannabe senator. She didn’t rush with her patients. Then she was all calm and empathetic and dedicated. What crap.

Robert thought back to a few weeks ago when he had shot himself in the foot and had gotten a good dose of her idea of dedication to her patients. She’d turned him in. He’d had to explain the gun to the cops and the shooting himself in the foot to them and the shrinks. Took him days and days to get that all straightened out. His damn foot still hurt. He’d meant only to get her attention, try to bridge the gap between them. Her a doctor, him a fucking floor-mopper in the same hospital. He figured he needed to do something dramatic to test her, as a doctor, as a woman. As the woman. He had never loved anyone else. Never. He’d been completely true to her.

He should have shot someone else. Another of the floor-moppers, maybe. Get her attention that way. He could have delivered the victim to her. She liked heroes, right? Look at the hero wannabe senator, saving pilots and fishermen.

Live and learn.