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  Marlene was growling.

  It was a weird little growl, which was par for Marlene, a sort of whiny purr with menace, but there was nothing weird about the way Marlene crouched on the bed in the moonlight. It was the first time Nell had seen her looking like pure, unaffected canine.

  “What?” she whispered to the dog, and Marlene crouched lower and growled deeper.

  Nell sat very still and listened and at last heard what Marlene had heard, a faint shuffle from the floor below, so faint she listened longer just to make sure as her skin went cold. There was somebody downstairs, opening drawers and closing cabinet doors.

  “Shhh,” she said to Marlene and eased up the phone. She hit 911, wincing at the tones in her ear, and when the dispatcher picked up the phone, she whispered, “There’s somebody in my kitchen.”

  When she’d whispered everything she knew into the phone, the dispatcher told her to stay on the line, and she sat in her welter of covers, her hand on the still-tense Marlene, praying whoever it was would stay downstairs until the police came or he found whatever he was looking for—

  She sat up a little straighter. What was he looking for? She didn’t even have a TV or a stereo. Surely by now any burglar would have taken one look at her dearth of electronics and decided she was a bad risk. Unless the burglar wasn’t a burglar. Unless …

  She disconnected from the 911 line and punched in the speed-dial code for the office. She was pretty sure it was the same phone Gabe had upstairs.

  “What?” Gabe said on the third ring, sounding half asleep and mad as hell.

  “There’s somebody here,” she whispered into the phone.

  “What?” he said again.

  “This is Nell,” she whispered.

  “I know it’s you,” he snapped. “Why are you whispering at three A.M.?”

  “There’s somebody here. In the apartment. Downstairs.”

  “Jesus, call 911.”

  “I did,” Nell said, exasperated. “Do you think I’m stupid? But I thought since this was Lynnie’s old place—”

  Marlene growled again, and Nell stopped, putting her hand on Marlene to quiet her so she could listen.

  Somebody was on the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” Gabe said. “Damn it, Nell—”

  “I think he’s coming up the stairs,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “And I’m really scared.”

  “Turn the light on,” Gabe said. “Do it now. Warn him you’re awake. Is your bedroom door locked?”

  “It doesn’t have a lock.”

  “Shove something in front of it.”

  “Right,” Nell said and put the phone down to push off her covers. Her hands were shaking, and as she kicked off the last of the blankets, she caught her foot in the Marlene’s chenille throw and tripped. Marlene went wild as the phone slid off the bed with a clatter, and Nell tried to catch herself on the bedside table and fell against the door instead, smacking her head on the doorknob as she went down, hearing somebody run down the stairs at full speed as she fell.

  “Shhhh,” she said to Marlene who was now in full-fledged snarl, flinging herself against the door and scrabbling at it with her nails. Sirens filled the air, and then lights swung across her wall from the street below, and Nell heard her back door slam. She rubbed her head once and then crawled back across the floor to the phone. “Gabe? It’s all right, I think. Gabe?” But he was gone.

  * * *

  “Thank you for taking twenty years off my life,” Gabe said an hour later when the police had gone. He was sitting in Nell’s living room on the daybed, drinking Glenlivet and trying to get his pulse under a hundred and twenty before he yelled at her for scaring the hell out of him.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Nell said. “Since it was Lynnie’s place and all.”

  “I’d want to know because it’s your place,” Gabe said. She was in pajamas made of some kind of slippery bright blue stuff that slid all over her when she moved and made her red hair look even wilder, especially next to the Technicolor bump she was sporting on her forehead. She was completely unconcerned about her pajamas, her bump, or the fact that she’d just had a near-rape-or-death experience, and she sat next to him on the daybed, pale and fine-boned and delicate, devouring whole-wheat toast with peanut butter and jam with a single-minded appetite that was disconcerting.

  Gabe took a piece of ice out of his Glenlivet and handed it to her. “Put that on the lump on your forehead,” he said and drank the rest of the Scotch.

  She held the ice to her forehead, frowning as it began to melt and the water ran down her arm.

  “Thank you for calling 911 first,” Gabe said, using a pillow to mop off her arm.

  “I’m not stupid,” Nell said.

  “Never thought you were,” Gabe said. “Just nuts. Do you think it was Lynnie?”

  “I don’t know,” Nell said, and then she thought about it while she chewed toast, her face getting that intense look that usually made him nervous. “No. Whoever it was stayed downstairs at first, and then came up. So he was looking for something down there—”

  “—and didn’t find it. Lynnie would have known where it was.” Gabe put his glass down. “Come on.”

  “Where?” Nell said.

  “Your bedroom,” he said.

  “Your technique needs work,” Nell said and made him wait until she’d finished the last of her toast.

  He stood inside the doorway and stared at the room. There were clothes and books tossed everywhere, her quilts were twisted in a heap on the massive bed that almost filled the room, and in the middle of it all, Marlene sat on the floor on a dark blue nubby-looking blanket and looked balefully at them.

  “Nice,” Gabe said, looking around the room. “I’ll look in the register grates. You find the floor so we can tap the boards.”

  Two and a half hours later, Gabe knew the upstairs of Nell’s apartment like no other place on earth, but they hadn’t found anything. Nell stretched in exhaustion as she got up from the guest room floor, her pajamas doing interesting things while she moved, and then she said. “I’d love to stay and play with you, but I have to be at work in an hour.”

  “Me, too.” Gabe sat with his back against the wall, frowning at the empty room. “Lucky for me I have a secretary who handles the office if I’m late.”

  “She might call in tired,” Nell said.

  “That might be a good idea,” Gabe said. “Let’s not leave this place empty until we’ve taken it apart.”

  “What did we just do?” Nell said. “A quick once-over?”

  “Riley might have some ideas. He doesn’t miss much. And then there’s the downstairs.” He pushed himself off the floor and went into her bedroom and picked up the phone. He punched the numbers in and frowned at her when she came in. She was even paler than usual and the bump on her head was turning purple. “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you.” Nell sat down on the big bed and flopped back against the pillows.

  “The pajamas are better than the Eeyores,” he said. “But your forehead is a mess.”

  “I was injured in the line of duty,” she said, crawling under the quilts.

  “I told you to keep ice on that bump,” Gabe said while the phone rang. “You should—”

  “What?” Riley said, grumpy and half asleep.

  “It’s me. Open the office today. Nell’s not coming in.”

  “I can be in there later,” Nell said, fighting sleep. “I just—”

  “And cancel whatever plans you have for tonight. Nell had a break-in last night and we need to search this place.”

  “A break-in?” Riley said, awake now. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. Just clumsy. All she needs is some sleep and some ice,” he said, directing the word to her, but she was asleep, her face serene for the first time since he’d met her. She looked pale and fragile and fine, like the woman in the Roethke poem, lovely in her bones.

  “Gabe?” Riley said.

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