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there with you.” She shook her head in determination. “But no matter. I’m sure I can find a way to overcome this little … problem. I’m willing to bet I can make myself look pretty hideous. I can wear clothing so that inmates will barely be able to tell I’m a woman, let alone a woman who might have any physical appeal.”
    Apgar sighed. “At the risk of being accused of sexual harassment, that would take quite some doing.”
    Erin smiled back sweetly. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. She paused for several seconds and then, in a level just above a whisper but with undeniable intensity, added, “But I think you’ll find that when I set my mind to something, I don’t let anything get in the way.”
    *   *   *
     
    ERIN’S MIND RETURNED to the present. Had it really only been five years since she had met Jason Apgar? Sometimes it seemed like five days. But for some reason, today it seemed like an eternity ago. An eternity in which she had given herself a literal prison sentence, just as surely as if she had been convicted by a judge.
    She had intended for this to be a normal session with the human monster named John, who could casually beat two people to death over some scratched paint. She would strap goggles containing a visual LED display over his eyes, pack his head with pillows, and slide it and his upper torso inside the doughnut-shaped MRI device. Then she would take a baseline. Finally, she would begin collecting new data.
    Simple and routine.
    But it wasn’t to be. John insisted on talking. In a different way, and about a different subject than he had ever spoken of before. After thirty minutes he showed no sign of slowing down. He seemed filled with remorse. And Erin believed him.
    And, strangely, she was as horrified by this turn of events as she was elated.

 
     
    3
     
    “YOU MUST BE the hardest working woman on this campus,” said Lisa Renner. “And that’s really saying something.”
    Erin Palmer smiled. “Okay, so I’m a bit driven. I confess. But I don’t think I’m that bad.”
    They arrived at their destination, a cozy Greek restaurant on the outskirts of campus, and waited to be seated.
    “Are you kidding me?” said Lisa. “Sharing an apartment with you is like having an apartment to myself .” She grinned. “Except that some mysterious stranger is nice enough to pay half the rent. It’s a good deal if you can get it.”
    Erin laughed. Actually, she felt as though she had gotten the better end of the deal. She couldn’t be more thrilled to have found Lisa Renner. Erin’s roommate of several years had done the unthinkable two months earlier—she had finished her Ph.D. and had taken a postdoc on the other side of the country. Erin had been wrapped up in her research as usual, and had been slow to realize that the few people she was close enough with to want as a roommate were happy with their current living arrangements, and she was forced to advertise for someone to room with. Urgently. Either that or learn how to beg for money on street corners.
    Graduate students were notoriously overworked and underpaid. In her case, she received some funding from grants and for teaching undergraduate courses, but she would have to get a substantial raise just to be considered poor . Lisa, a third-year history graduate student who also found herself running low on funds, had come along at exactly the right time seven weeks earlier, and they had hit it off immediately.
    Lisa was possibly the sweetest girl Erin had ever met. She was hardworking but spontaneous. She was relentlessly upbeat and full of life, both qualities that Erin knew she needed to work on. At twenty-four, she was three years younger than Erin, exactly the same age that Erin’s sister, Anna, would have been, and Erin was surprised by how quickly she’d come to love this quirky, endearing history student.
    “Okay. I work late a lot,” confessed Erin. “But I have been getting better since you moved in.