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carting her off to a secret hideaway showed considerably more determination than filing a lawsuit.
    She waited.
    “The letter,” he said finally, “will state your decision to go away for a while, on your own. You need some time to yourself. Your sister shouldn’t worry—everything is fine—but she may not hear from you for an indefinite period. Got it?”
    Bad. Very bad.
    He didn’t want money for her, and he wasn’t interested in making a statement, general or personal.
    He simply wanted her to disappear. Indefinitely.
    “Got it?” he said again.
    She managed a weak smile. “No problem.”
    “A word of warning, Doc. I’ll peruse that letter extremely carefully. Any deviation from the content I outlined—any clues, any hints—will not pass unnoticed. Or unpunished.”
    Peruse , he’d said. Hell, his vocabulary was better than her own.
    “I won’t drop any hints.” She hoped her shrug looked sincere. “I know when it pays to be cooperative, and this is one of those times. Anyway, it’s fairly obvious you’ve been one step ahead of me all along.”
    “You’re working so hard to establish a rapport with me, lull me into a false sense of complacency. See how well you’ve succeeded?”
    Oh, sure, she thought bleakly. I’ve got you right where I want you.
    Seated in the chair, a sheaf of embossed paper balanced on her knee, she composed the letter in a few sparse lines. There was no suggestion of her own personality in the message. A robot could have written it.
    Annie would never believe any of this garbage, of course. Each of them knew the other far too well to fall for such an obvious trick.
    Possibly, however, the letter was intended not to deceive Annie, but to defuse any police investigation that might be under way. Tucson P.D. could hardly pursue a missing-person case when the person in question had expressly stated that she’d left town voluntarily.
    And if no one was looking for her, she would never be found.
    “Make out the envelope, too,” he ordered as she put down the pen.
    Writing the address, she had an idea. A sizable risk for a minimal gain, but she would dare it.
    Annie lived at 509 Calle Saguaro. Erin wrote 505, carefully rounding the fives.
    SOS.
    Would Annie notice? Would it matter even if she did? Impossible to say.
    “Now place the letter and envelope on the other chair, and put on the blindfold again.”
    Knotting the cloth in place, blacking out her world, she tried another conversational ploy. “I’m glad you want me blindfolded. That way your identity will be safe.”
    “It will be safe, anyway—if I kill you.”
    A frighteningly logical answer, which raised an all-too-obvious question.
    Well, ask it, then. Be direct. “Is that what’s going to happen?”
    “Not necessarily. You’re right about the blindfold, Dr. Reilly. As long as you haven’t seen my face, you’ve got a chance of surviving our relationship.”
    Our relationship . She supposed she should be glad he’d phrased it that way, implying a connection between them.
    This time she didn’t hear the door open, but somehow she knew the precise moment when he stepped into the room. His presence chilled her like a cold draft from an unseen window.
    The other chair protested as he sat down. He must be facing her across a distance of six feet. She waited through a long silence, thinking hard.
    This would be their first extended encounter—very likely a period of maximum danger. She was something new in his world, destabilizing, threatening. It was possible he’d never been alone in a room with a woman before. He was almost certainly under more stress than his outwardly cool manner would suggest.
    How to handle it?
    Even though he’d seen through her efforts to form a bond between them, she had to keep trying. It was imperative that he not be allowed to objectify her, to reduce her to the status of a mere symbol. She had to be a person in his eyes, preferably a person who mattered to him.
    Best to be