Out of her control, she thought, and she hated having anything out of her control. She had to depend on Rachael for this, and hoped she’d hear from her before the end of the day.

“She’ll tell us when she knows something, right?” She leaned down to give Sadie a rub. “So we just wait. Let’s go salute the sun, what do you say? Get out of our own heads.”

She changed into yoga pants and a tank, pulled her hair back in a band. And in bare feet, went down to the kitchen with her mat. Restless night or not, she loved early mornings, the quiet of them, the air, the sense everything but her and Sadie and the birds still slept.

She freshened Sadie’s water bowl, filled a bottle for herself, and left the porch doors open to the air as they went down to the patio. Taking the unrolling of the mat as her signal, Sadie wandered off into the yard.

Adrian stood a moment, facing the light, pink and gold now just above the tree line. Somewhere a woodpecker drummed busily for its breakfast, and a hawk circling overhead hunted his.

Tomatoes ripened on vines she’d planted, and the lush sweep of hydrangeas her grandparents had planted years before thrived with heads that would soon turn madly blue.

A pretty morning, she thought again. And another fresh start.

Hands in prayer, she breathed in, then lifted her arms high.

From his perch in the woods, he watched her. It thrilled.

There she was! Not on a screen, not in a crowd as she’d been when, years before, he’d traveled to New York after he’d learned she’d appear on the Today show.

But in person, and alone.

What a way to start the day!

He hadn’t expected her to come out so early. And she’d left the door open. He’d almost shouted with joy when she’d stepped out on the second-floor porch, just stood there, looked right over where he hid.

Maybe the dog was bigger than he’d thought, but he’d take care of that. Sadie, he remembered from the blog. Bitch dog for a bitch.

He liked dogs. Couldn’t stand cats, and had plugged his share of strays in his time, but he liked dogs. Maybe he’d get himself a dog one of these days, he considered as he loaded the rifle.

Not a bitch though, and he’d be damned if he’d have his dog’s balls cut off. A man had to be a man, didn’t he?

As the dog wandered closer to the woods, JJ shouldered the rifle. A little closer, big girl, he thought.

But when her head came up, when she sniffed the air—maybe scenting him—he fired.

The sound, no more than a muffled pop, didn’t reach Adrian on her mat as she lowered into Chaturanga. JJ watched the dog take a stumbling step, and one more, then go down.

Night night, he thought.

Mind clear, breath steady, Adrian continued her flow. Her muscles warmed; her mood mellowed. She held in Warrior I, let the stretch work its magic, then slid fluidly into Warrior II.

Deep, so her body sighed with it. And with her gaze focused along her right outstretched hand, she saw the man come out of the woods.

Everything froze, and in that frozen moment, she hurtled back, years back, to Georgetown. Not possible, not possible because she’d seen him wheel over the railing, she’d seen him fall.

She’d seen him die.

But he walked toward her now, smiling a terrible smile.

Run! she heard the voice scream inside her head. But when she started to swing around and charge the steps, he leveled a gun at her.

“Take a step, I’ll shoot you. I won’t kill you, but I’ll take you down.”

Beyond him, just to the left, she saw Sadie sprawled on the ground. Warning or not, the terror and grief spiked.

“Sadie!”

When she started to run for the dog, he stepped in front of her. “One more step, I shoot you in the knee. It’ll hurt like hell, and you won’t run again. She’s just sleeping.”

He beamed that smile again out of the face of a dead man.

And for a horrible instant she was seven again, and helpless.

“I don’t kill dogs. What do you take me for? Tranquilizer gun. Picked it up back in Wyoming, just for her, just for today. Now you’re going to walk on up there into the house so we can have some privacy.”

He smiled that smile again. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Sis.”

Not The Man, she realized. His son. Almost a mirror image, but she could see some differences now. The son had a slighter build, and no silver glinting at his temples. The hair itself, choppily cut, not styled.

But the eyes, oh, the eyes were the same. Despite the smile, rage and madness lived there.

And she wasn’t seven anymore. She wasn’t helpless.

“You’re Jonathan Bennett.”

“Just call me JJ.”

“You’ve been sending me poems. For a long time.”

“Got another for you, but that’ll wait. We’ll talk inside.”

If she could keep him out here, she might still find room to run. Or Sadie—if he told the truth—might wake up.

“We were just children. You, your sister, me. We didn’t do anything.”

“The child makes the man, or the whore-bitch, depending.”

“Is your sister here, too? Does she want to talk to me?”

“It’s just you and me. Nikki? She likes to put up walls, tune out. She’s like our mother that way, without the pills and booze. Well, she’s inside four of them now, and there she’ll stay.”

She heard pleasure in his voice. Not rage, not fury, but an almost dreamy pleasure. Maybe she could reason with him.

“I don’t know anything about you, or her. I just—”

“You’ll find out plenty. Up the stairs, nice and slow. You try to bolt, I blow out your knee. Move!”

And that rage, that fury flashed to burning in his eyes.

“Or I’ll put you down and drag you in bleeding.”

He would, she could see he would. She turned for the stairs, tried to think, just think, through the screaming fear.

She knew the house, every inch. He didn’t. A moment’s distraction, that’s all she needed.

Dozens of places to hide, dozens of ways to fight back.

But she needed a distraction. And couldn’t risk it with a gun at her back.

Get to her phone. In the bedroom on the charger. Get to her phone, call for help.

She stepped into the kitchen, scanned over to the knife block. Maybe, maybe, if an opportunity came.

“Close the doors, and lock them.”

She obeyed, but she was thinking now.

If he’d wanted to kill her outright, she’d be dead. He wanted to talk first. He wanted to tell his story, or rage at her, or both.

He wanted to hurt her before he killed her.

That gave her time, and with time came opportunities and distractions.

“Some place,” he commented. “Big-ass house. I grew up in a big house, but I’ve been making do with a nice little cabin for a while now. Upstairs.”

“Upstairs?”

“You left doors open up there, too. You thought you were all safe here, didn’t you, in your big-ass house.”

Upstairs, she thought. Her phone on the charger.

She walked, considering places she could hide, or areas where she could fight, weapons she could use. A lamp, a heavy vase, a paperweight, a letter opener.

“Why poems? Why did you send poems?”