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was what she would have advised anyone else to do. But Mariko didn’t do it. She grabbed her phone and dialed Han. “Get to my place as quick as you can,” she said. “Bring a fingerprinting kit with you, and don’t touch my door until you dust it.”
    •   •   •
    “Screw the prints,” Han said, “how are you ?”
    “I told you, I’m fine,” Mariko said. They both knew she was lying and they both knew why, and Mariko wished Han could just leave it at that. “What did you find on my doorknob?”
    “Prints all over it—most of them yours, probably, but we know your guy definitely didn’t wipe it clean. No scarring around the keyhole, so I don’t think he used a bump key. No scuffs on the frame near the jamb either, so I don’t think he worked the bolt. But I’ve got this funny suspicion that you knew all of that already. What’s going on here?”
    “Weird stuff. Ninja stuff.” Mariko took the fingerprinting kit from him and started dusting her apartment, starting with the sword rack in the bedroom. “I checked with the night watchman; only four people came in or out all night, and they all live here. The security cameras tell the same story. My windows are all intact, all locked from the inside—”
    “Which hardly matters, since you live on the seventeenth floor—”
    “But I checked anyway, just to be thorough. And you’re going to love this: the door chain was latched too.”
    “What? That’s impossible.”
    “Clearly not.”
    “Come on. How could he—?”
    “I don’t know, Han. All I know is that when I come home I always slide the chain on the little thingy, and when I woke up this morning, the chain was on the little thingy.”
    Han poked his head in her bedroom. “So your perp couldn’t have come through the door.”
    “Nope.”
    “And he couldn’t have come through a window.”
    “Not unless he knows how to relock them from outside.”
    Han scanned the room, maybe looking for additional entries and exits. “So what’d he do, pass through the wall?”
    “Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it? And he walked out of here with a sword this big.” She spread her arms as wide as they would go. “Not exactly inconspicuous. I’ve had the radio on ever since I called you. No reports of a ninja creeping through the neighborhood with a giant sword.”
    “To hell with the radio. You need to call Mulder and Scully. This isn’t a home invasion, it’s a damn X-Files episode.” He studied her for a second. “Shit, Mariko, I’m sorry. This has to be scary as hell for you.”
    “I’m not exactly thrilled about it, no.” She looked away from him, and pressed her eyes shut and her lips together as if sheer force of will could keep her face from going red. She didn’t want to have this conversation with another cop—not even with Han, the one person she trusted more than anyone else on the force.
    “Did he . . . I mean, are you okay? Like, okay okay?”
    Mariko swallowed. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, no, he didn’t rape me.”
    Han sighed as if she’d just lifted a parked car off his chest. His relief was so palpable that she even felt some of it herself. This was why he’d earned her trust. Any other man in the department would have pressured her to go in for a rape kit. Han took her at her word, and he did it because he treated her like an adult. Lots of the other guys respected her, but they did it the same way they’d respect a high school athlete doing something amazing, something only the pros should be able to do.
    So when he felt relieved, it wasn’t fatherly or brotherly or anything else. It was plain old thank God you’re okay , and that meant the world to her. Given the morning she was having, it almost made her cry.
    But that wasn’t something she was going to do, even in front of him. She busied herself with studying the crime scene so she’d have something other than her emotions to think about. Her eyes passed over