Find a way. Or I will be a problem. Do you think Donna can take another night of nasty surprises?

There was a long pause.

Give me a minute.

I’ll give you five.

I’m going to have to take the car. I can’t just go out walking. She won’t believe that.

Whatever. I’m up the block across the street. By the wall. Light brown Toyota. Park behind me.

He was almost ten minutes in getting there.

She sent a message she’d put together while she was waiting.

Turn off the car. Throw the keys out of your window. Leave your seat belt on. I’m coming to you. I have a gun because I don’t trust you. That’s all. Not looking to use it.

He didn’t reply right away, and Marcelline was typing a new message when the response finally came.

I’m out.

That’s a mistake. You might just have to be okay with not controlling everything for once. I’m not stupid. I don’t want attention any more than you do. But if you leave now, anything goes. What have I got to lose?

He waited.

He would be thinking of a way to make this his own. She didn’t have any choice but to let him try.

The headlights went out behind her. The engine died. She heard the musical clatter of keys on the sidewalk.

The rest of it she’d have to take as it came.

The fear blended into the purposeful revving of the blood in her veins. She needed the painting, but this is what she’d wanted. The manic edge was effervescent, a dangerous flavor of wonderful. And all of it couldn’t entirely erase the ridiculous part. The gun felt outlandish.

Where ludicrous meets necessity, in all likelihood, what’s happening shouldn’t be. She thought of Samantha in a pang of apology. She would seriously hate this. I’m sorry.

And still Marcelline was out of her car and rounding to the passenger side of Jonathan’s. She held Roy’s pistol against her thigh to camouflage it as best she could in the suburban semidarkness.

Jonathan noted the gun as she got in, but didn’t say anything.

A moment of nearly blissful neutrality shimmered between them. Not “John” and “Emma” because those people didn’t exist. They were liars. Jonathan and Marcelline, here together now, were rather past the need for all that. She would have back the day she met him for anything. But that was impossible. Here they were. Her shoulders relaxed in the only seconds of freedom she’d had in four years. No need to pretend anything. No need to guard against discovery.