“More love letters,” Frankie said. She connected a charger to her phone to juice the battery.

“Well, aren’t you the lucky one.”

“Not so lucky. This one says he wants to watch me die.”

The dark brows over Virgil’s hawk-like eyes arched in surprise. His smirk froze as he tried to figure out whether she was joking. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Are you going to call the cops or something?”

“They won’t do anything. They’ll come if he shows up waving a gun, but short of that, I’m on my own.” She added, “He was in here last night, Virgil.”

“The hell you say.”

“My security company traced him to the Wi-Fi at the restaurant. Was anyone asking about me? Or watching me?”

“Just that tasty cop.”

“Keep an eye open, okay?” Frankie asked. “If you see somebody, let me know.”

“My eyes are always open,” Virgil said.

Frankie went back to her wine. She picked at the plate of yellowfin tuna in front of her. She gazed at Post Street to see if anyone lingered in the arched entrances of the Marriott, but no one outside the hotel paid special attention to the windows at Zingari.

She wondered if she should call the CEO at Pell Security again and ask him to provide personal protection for a few days. She’d had to do that once before, when the Darren Newman case exploded. The knifing death of the young woman, Merrilyn Somers, had put Frankie in the headlines, and she’d received anonymous threats from people who were convinced that she’d set a killer free. Legally, she was blameless, but morally, she couldn’t shake her own sense of guilt. She was relieved when Newman was cleared, but her doubts about him had never gone away.

Frankie felt surrounded by ghosts in the restaurant. Her father. Darren Newman. The Night Bird. And now Todd Ferris, too—the man at the Bay Trail with his memories of torture in a white room. She wasn’t convinced that what Todd had experienced was real. Some people made up stories that put themselves at the center of current events. It made them feel important. His descriptions also had a hallucinatory quality, maybe from drugs, maybe from dreams. Even his recollection of Brynn Lansing—if it had happened at all—could be easily explained. Brynn worked near Frankie’s building; he might well have seen her as he was going in or out of the Union Square office.

She’d urged Todd to schedule an appointment, but he declined. He still didn’t want anything in writing. And then he’d left. That was that. She wondered if she would hear from him again.

Virgil slid into the chair opposite her. He smoothed his beautiful hair. “Want company?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh good, because I wasn’t going to give you a choice.”

“Can I ask you a question, Virgil?”

“Nine inches,” he said.