“Let me talk to her,” Gary said. He looked defeated. “Let me talk to her. Then I’ll come out.” Pause. “Yeah. With Miss Callaghan.”

A moment of silence while Gary paced again across the room. “Rosie? Hi, baby. How are you?” His face changed, his eyes softer, his mouth unsteady as if he might cry.

Keara’s heart squeezed and ached. She put a hand to her mouth and watched him. Listened.

“I love you, Rosie. Just remember that, okay? Always remember I love you.”

Oh God. What was he going to do? It sounded as if he thought he’d never see her again. Panic trickled down her spine in a cold drizzle. Her legs twitched on the floor.

He closed the phone and gestured again with the gun. “Stand up.”

She rose to her feet, legs weak and shaky. He opened the door and stood aside. “Go on.”

She stared at him. “What?

“You can leave. Go.” He motioned with the gun again.

“Just go?” She couldn’t believe it. Would he shoot her in the back as she walked away? And why wasn’t he coming?

He nodded, subdued, an aura of overwhelming loss and defeat surrounding him. Keara stopped. What was he going to do? Oh God. Oh no. She knew why he wasn’t coming. Her stomach heaved.

Now her fear wasn’t for herself. “Gary.” She put out a hand. “Come with me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. They’ll put me in jail.”

Throat squeezing, chest aching, she shook her head. “We’ll find a way, Gary. A way to help Rosie.”

“Yeah right. I told you. There is no way. Not anymore. This was my last hope. I told you to go!”

“No! The bank can help you. Please, Gary, come with me. We’ll work something out. We’ll look at an early pension payout, maybe a way to continue your benefits, some kind of loan…there are lots of options.”

His eyes, earlier stony and cold, regarded her with cautious hope for a stretched out moment. “Really?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Gary. I really am. I’ll try to help. To make up for it.” And she would. Her heart ached for the pain she’d seen in him when he talked to his wife. She’d never loved someone like that, but it had to be excruciating, to see someone you loved dying from the inside out, slowly, not even knowing who you were anymore.

He considered it. She waited, legs so shaky she thought she might fall down. So close. Would he do it?

“You know I keep my word,” she said softly. “I may have to make decisions people don’t like, but…I’ve always done what I said I would.”

He still hesitated, stared at her warily.

“Okay.” He bent down and grabbed the balaclava off the floor and pulled it on.

Why was he doing that? They already knew who he was. Her gut tightened again. He took hold of her, this time in a firm but not painful grasp, still holding the gun on her.

Was he being honest? Or was he still going to kill her? Her heart thudded painfully as he gently urged her forward, down the hall and into the lobby of the bank. But the anguish and love she’d seen in this man’s eyes were not the emotions of a cold-blooded killer. As they moved forward, him behind her, his hands on her but this time gentle, she knew he wouldn’t kill her. Probably never had intended to kill her.

“Keep your hands up and in sight,” he told her.

Why? Obediently, she did so as they walked out the front door of the bank.

Oh Jesus. In the sunshine outside the bank, a spinning impression of crowds of people, television cameras, SWAT officers, guns, vans and cars assaulted her. She kept her hands up. Gary held the gun pressed to the side of her head.

His finger could accidentally pull the trigger. Even if he didn’t intend to kill her anymore. One of those SWAT officers could shoot her, aiming for him. They could scare him and his finger could so easily…pull…the…trigger.

Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.

Her eyes flickered around. Distant shouts mingled with Gary’s harsh breathing in her ear. A loud pop split the commotion. Gary’s weight dragged her down, the pavement of the sidewalk meeting her knees in a harsh kiss, and she cried out.

Chapter Two

She never felt more alone than in the middle of the night, when the world was dark and quiet and still, everyone else asleep in their beds.

“Oh, Keara.” A heavy sigh came from the other end of the phone line. “What are you doing up again?”

Keara swallowed and sank down onto her couch. “I just had an idea for what we can do for Monica’s birthday next weekend,” she told her friend Paige.

“What! Why are you calling me about that in the middle of the night? You had another nightmare, didn’t you?”

“No. I haven’t had one for a couple of weeks,” Keara lied. “You know me, I just get thinking about things and I…I can’t get back to sleep.”

“Maybe you need to go back to that shrink…what was his name?”

“I don’t need a shrink,” Keara snapped. “I told you that before.”

“Then why haven’t you gone back to work?”

Keara pressed her lips together. She’d tried to go back to work. She hadn’t even told Paige about that embarrassing incident. She’d really flip out if she knew about that. She’d be picking her up and driving her to the psychiatrist herself. Which. She. Did. Not. Need.

Keara’s throat clogged and her chest tightened. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Keara…”

“’Night, Paige.”

She clicked the phone off and dropped it to the butter-colored upholstery beside her. She tipped her head back and blinked at the ceiling, eyes stinging. Damn.

She could call Monica.

But no. Monica had gone away to San Diego for the weekend with the new guy she’d been seeing. And she couldn’t call Essie. With her new baby, she might be awake in the middle of the night. But if she was asleep and Keara called and woke her up—again—she’d kill her. She’d made that mistake once before. Besides, if her friends all talked about how she kept phoning in the middle of the night, she’d never hear the end of it.

She padded on bare feet out to the kitchen of her condo in the Los Angeles high-rise. She ran some cold water, then held the cool glass to her sweaty forehead. Her eyes fell on the bottle of pills sitting on the counter. She could take those and sleep. She picked up the container.

There was no shame in using medication, the psychiatrist had told her. And yet, she really didn’t want to take drugs to solve her problems. Hell, she didn’t even understand what her problems were. God! She clutched the bottle in her hand and closed her eyes. She was fine. Totally fine. Tell that to her body, though, which betrayed her time and time again, with a speeding heart, tight and trembling muscles and a stomach constricted with nausea. And she’d been doing so well. No dreams, no flashbacks for a couple of weeks. What had triggered that nightmare tonight?

A noise alerted her ears. A scrape against the glass doors leading out onto her balcony. She lived on the third floor of the building, which wasn’t likely to be a target for a break-in, but recently she’d found herself wishing she lived in the penthouse, twenty stories above.

It was nothing. Wind or something.

Then she heard it again.

Her heart, which had been slowing its beat, picked up speed, blood surging through her veins. She stepped out of the kitchen and focused on the curtains drawn over the sliding glass doors—not opaque enough to completely blot out the city lights, nor the shadow moving on the balcony.

Her stomach lurched. Oh dear God. There was someone on her balcony. Her living room shifted around her and adrenaline flashed through her body. She lifted a hand to her throat. Stared at the window. She had to be imagining it. Nobody could climb up three stories. Nobody would climb up three stories.

But another scraping noise outside the window, like someone was working at the lock, had her reaching for the telephone. Crap, she’d left it on the couch. She scurried over and grabbed it off the sofa, then fled to her bedroom on trembling legs. She shut the door and leaned against it. Fingers shaking so hard she couldn’t hit the right buttons, she finally managed to punch in 9-1-1.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”

“Someone’s breaking into my condo!” she hissed into the phone, fingers gripping it so tightly they hurt. “Please, send the police, quickly!”

The operator asked her questions and kept her on the line while she leaned against the door, shaking inside and out.

“The police will be there soon,” the voice on the phone assured her. “Stay calm, ma’am.”

Calm. Calm? Shivering in her sleep shorts and tank top, Keara kept the phone pressed to her ear. She moved silently to the far side of the armoire, slid down onto the floor where she couldn’t be seen from the door. She dropped the phone to the gray Berber carpet beside her, bent her knees, wrapped her arms around them.

The marble floor of the bank lobby was cold and hard beneath her bottom as she slid her shaking arms around bent knees and hugged them …

No! She wasn’t in the bank. She was at home in her apartment. She focused on her bedroom. The bed skirt was crooked. She’d tucked it up under the mattress on one corner when she was making the bed. She’d have to fix that. Hell, what was she thinking?

With knees pressed to chest, her heart thumped painfully and her lungs expanded and contracted against them with every shallow breath. In. Out. In. Out.

Please, please let them get here quickly. She laid her forehead on her knees, shoulders hunched up around her ears. And waited.

She pictured someone on the balcony trying to get in, her ears attuned to the sound of breaking glass or the familiar scrape of the door opening.