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the foot of the bed. He sat there for a moment, shoulders hunched forward. Gillian ran her hand up and down his back. “What is it?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
    He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I just started thinking about what a bum deal you got when you married me. You thought you were getting an advertising executive, and maybe some nice house in Winnetka or Lake Forest. Instead, you ended up with a truck driver in a dump of a duplex in Seattle. If it weren’t for your mother and your books bailing us out, I would have sunk this family. Me and my stupid schemes…”
    “Oh, Barry, that’s old business,” she said, hugging him. “It’s forgotten. We’re doing okay now. You have a wife and son who both worship you.”
    They tumbled back on the bed and held onto each other. Barry kissed her deeply. Gillian sensed he still harbored some awful secret. But she didn’t dare ask. She had a feeling the twelve years they’d spent building a life together and raising a son would all go down the drain if he told her what was really troubling him. So she didn’t ask. She just clung to him.
    There was suddenly something inside her too—a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. That awful foreboding sensation didn’t go away, not even after they’d made love that night. Gillian remembered it was only two weeks before Barry disappeared. All that time, the knots in her stomach hadn’t gone away. It was as if her body had known what was going to happen.
    Barry took two suitcases with him. But he’d left so much behind. Most of his clothes still hung in their closet. His favorite coffee mug was still on the kitchen shelf. She and Ethan still waited for him to come back.
    Gillian hugged his pillow, and wondered about that mysterious e-mail: “Gillian, I found your husband.” Did it mean she was closer to seeing Barry again? Or was it an indication that she and Ethan had lost him forever?
    She heard rain pattering against the bedroom window. Gillian opened her eyes to see the dawn’s gray light seeping through the thin drapes. Then a shadow passed across the very edge of the window. It made her sit up.
    The wind howled, and rain continued to tap against the glass. That thing fluttered along the window’s edge again. It looked like a bird or something. Maybe it was caught in the rosebush beside the window.
    Climbing out of bed, Gillian threw on her robe, and crept to the window. She parted the drapes and peered outside. Past the rain-beaded glass, she studied the ravine: nothing, just a slight rustling amid the forest of trees and bushes. She didn’t see anything in the backyard.
    Then it appeared again. Someone’s trash—a food wrapper—had become momentarily entangled in the rosebush by her window. Gillian caught a glimpse of the Taco Bell wrapper before the wind carried it away.
    She shucked off the robe, and crawled back into bed. Hugging Barry’s old pillow to her chest, Gillian closed her eyes and prayed for a little sleep. It wouldn’t come easy, she knew, because that awful feeling in the pit of her stomach was back.

Chapter 4
     
     
    This book is dedicated to my oldest and dearest friend,
    Dianne Garrity.
    Di, you told me I should be a writer, and taught me
    to pursue my dreams.
    Everyone should have a friend like you.
     
     
    The man on the Chicago El train was reading the dedication in Gillian McBride’s Killing Legend . Just five days ago, he had been in New York City, where the woman he’d stabbed was still in a coma.
    He’d dog-eared another page in Gillian’s book. It was a passage describing how the killer, a former Hollywood hunk now disfigured from a car accident, snuck into his latest victim’s house to poison some milk in her refrigerator. Afterward, the killer typed a suicide note on the victim’s computer so people would think she’d killed herself.
    The man got off at the Belmont El stop, and a cool, damp blast of wind hit him—courtesy of Lake Michigan. With Gillian’s