Sophia finished her drink and stood, left a few bills on the table, and tried to call James again, but this time her call went straight to voice mail. She texted him for the third time:

Where r u? We need to talk. Now!

He was avoiding her. That was it. She walked into the lobby, where she spied Donna at the front desk.

Oh, God, she didn’t want to talk to her boss. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Just James!

She was headed for the front door when Donna looked up from her keyboard and held up a hand. “Sophia!”

She probably wanted Sophia to work someone’s shift. Well, no way.

“Sophia!” Donna said, more loudly, and to Sophia’s surprise, her boss actually left her post at the reception desk to walk briskly across the lobby, past the Christmas tree, not even bothering to kick back one of the “presents” that had escaped from underneath the glittering boughs. “Sophia, have you heard?” Donna’s face was a little whiter than usual, her eyes worried beneath her curlicued bangs. “About Willow?”

Oh, dear God. She was going to ask Sophia to fill in for that near-mute maid with the snaky black braid and the ever-watchful eyes, the girl who helped her clean up the mess that had been James’s house. “What about her?” Sophia wasn’t all that interested. Willow was weird, and the way she gazed at James sometimes was really unnerving. Beyond creepy. If ever there was a stalker in the world, Sophia thought, it could well be Willow Valente.

“She’s dead.”

Sophia froze. She thought she’d heard wrong. “What?” Was this Donna’s sick idea of a joke?

“I finally heard from Zena. Willow’s dead.”

“Jesus,” Sophia squeaked out. “What happened?” Had the girl been in some horrific accident?

“Zena’s there now, at Willow’s apartment. The cops have been interrogating her and Bobby; she’d already called him. Now they’re talking to James and a woman he was with, the one who came here and asked about him.”

“What woman?” Sophia demanded.

“The one who was on TV, Megan Travers’s sister.”

Rebecca! Sophia’s stomach dropped, and she thought she might be sick. “They all went there? To her apartment?”

“They went when they heard the news. First Bobby, then James and the woman. I know because James left Bruce’s phone here at the front desk for him to pick up. Apparently he’d lost it.”

Sophia didn’t care about Bruce’s damned cell. “So, wait. Back up a sec. What happened to Willow?” This was getting crazy.

Donna lowered her voice, looked from side to side as if she expected someone from the FBI to be listening. “Zena went to check on her, because, you know, she didn’t show up for her shift, and she found her in her bed. Zena said it looked like she’d shot herself.”