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indifference. He saved her leather card case for last, flipping it open to extract one-handed her Visa card, her AAA card, her health insurance card and her driver’s license, studying each in turn.
    “These are excellent forgeries,” he told her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were the real thing.” He glanced up to look at her. “But we weren’t the ones who made them. Who did?”
    Marnie inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. “Well, that first came from the bank when I opened my Visa account. The second came from triple-A. That third was from my insurer and the fourth is from the Ohio DMV.”
    He narrowed his eyes at her. “Very funny.”
    “Wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “They’re not forgeries.”
    Without returning the cards to the case, he dropped all of them into her purse and snapped it shut. “Start the car,” he said as he tossed it into the back without bothering to see where it landed.
    Damn men, anyway, Marnie thought as she watched him do it. They had no clue as to the importance of the ideal accessory.
    “Which way am I supposed to go?” she asked when the little car purred to life.
    “Use the mall’s north exit,” he told her.
    His directions after that were clipped, concise and to the point. After ten minutes of driving, they were out of the Cleveland suburbs. Another fifteen, and they were crossing the county line, headed west on Interstate 90 toward any number of small towns that doubled as weekend retreats on Lake Erie. Obviously “not far” was a relative term to him, because it was nearly another hour before they finally reached their destination. During that time, he spoke scarcely a word to her—not that Marnie was all that fired up to get to know him better—and she kept her own thoughts to herself. But when he finally instructed her to pull the car to a halt, throw it into Park and cut the engine, she saw that they had arrived at—
    Oh. An isolated cabin in the woods. Why had she not seen this coming from a mile away?
    “Get out,” he told her. Then he repeated what seemed to be his mantra. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    Marnie waited for the fear to roar up again, but she felt only resolve now. Exiting the car, she inhaled the pungent aroma of fresh evergreen, and through a break in the trees, she could just make out the glitter of moonlight on water. But not Lake Erie. They’d left the interstate for a county road some miles back and headed east, away from the lake. This must be a small tributary that fed into it. Had she been arriving here for a weekend getaway, she would have been charmed by her surroundings. In the moonlit darkness, she saw that the cottage was of the faux-rustic variety—perfect for a guy like faux Randy—built to look like a log cabin but obviously fairly new. It was enchanting, really.
    How comforting to realize she’d enjoy such a cozy atmosphere during the last hours of her life.
    Marnie still didn’t know what to do. She could try to run, but she didn’t relish the idea of being in the woods alone at night. Who knew how far it was to another cabin, or if there even was another cabin nearby? Besides, her captor would probably tackle her—or shoot her—before she even made it to the tree line. She didn’t want to go inside the house, since that would make escape even more difficult if not downright impossible, but there might be something inside she could use for a weapon….
    The matter was taken out of her hands when faux Randy circled the front of the car and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around her upper arm. “Walk,” he said, jabbing the barrel of his gun into her ribs.
    Well, okay. If he insisted.
    He had the manuscript tucked beneath his arm as he guided her forward. Marnie made it up the three stairs of the front porch without tripping, but her entire body was racked with trembling by the time they reached the front door. Something cold and slimy had settled