Fletch walked me home. “I promise you, wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll keep an eye out for those ads on the power poles and if I see any more of them, I’ll pull them down.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking over the crumpled, torn ads in my hands. “I feel like I must be missing something. Sure, Natalie was angry at Carver for promising her a contract and then always forgetting the papers, or putting her off with some other excuse. Something about this doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Why did Natalie think you were Carver? From the picture on this flyer, it seems pretty clear to me that you don’t look that much like him. If she knew him so well... if she had been fighting with him, then why did she mistake you for him?”

“It was dark? She was a little drunk?” Fletch supplied.

“It was dark,” I agreed. “I don’t know if she’d been drinking. Couldn’t have been that much, because she didn’t smell like a sewer rat. You know, as I think it over, I think the truth might be something else.”

“Like what?”

“That she was lying about what he was doing to her. Maybe she didn’t know him very well, at all. Maybe that was why she had to hit me over the head with the brick. She needed me to help with the kidnapping, but she didn’t want me there for the interrogation, because she was going to use the kidnapping as a way to get to know him. She needed to get rid of me.”

Fletch kissed the spot on my head where my goose egg had been. “You think your fight with her was a part of her plan? That she staged it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, and this ad means she’s still trying to get his attention, but I don’t see how this kind of thing could bring positive attention. This could only bring righteous indignation down on her head, maybe even a lawsuit. I don’t know why she’d want to risk it, but I don’t know how many things she’s tried before.”

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We were at my door.

“Do you want me to come up with you?” Fletch offered, his hand cupped around my ear as if he whispered a secret to me.

I thought about the rooms I had not yet shown him—the jewelry box. “Maybe not tonight,” I said, touching his hands and arms because I liked it so much when he touched me. “I need to do some thinking, and I may have already had the stuffing knocked out of me today.”

“All the more reason why I should come up. I’ll rub your feet and take care of you.” His voice was tantalizing as his words floated across the air to me.

I decided to lay the honest reason down between us. “I’m not ready to show you my place. We need to meet out in the open a few more times. I have a couple more projects on my mind for this week and the week after. I’m not trying to disguise myself, I would just feel more comfortable showing you the inside of my home after we’ve played together in the streets a few more times. Can you wait a bit longer? Or maybe we should go to your place?”

He immediately straightened. “When you put it that way, I agree with you completely.”

I caught on. “You don’t want to show me your place either?”

He grinned. It was the type of grin that made you want to forgive the next thing he said no matter what it was. “No. I don’t.” He took my hand in his and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. “Even though you’ve been so generous as to tell me what you like when it’s illegal, I would like to put my best foot forward with you. I didn’t think I needed to vacuum, but I can see now that I do. I probably need to do a few other things too. Forgive me.” He kissed the back of my hand. “The goal is not to impress you, but to refrain from disgusting you.”

I patted him on the arm. “You don’t know that I’m not the sort of girl who falls asleep in dill pickle potato chip crumbs.”

He laughed like that was the biggest joke of the night. “I’ll bring some the next time I come by. You should have a supply if they make your hips look like that.” He kissed the side of my head. “I’ll see you later.”

I watched him let me go, grab hold of the railing to my entrance, leap over the rail and the bush on the other side of it. He disappeared a heartbeat later. It was already after dark and anything that wasn’t illuminated by the light over my head was cast in a thick shadow.

I opened the door to my apartment building and stopped in front of my mailbox. I took out my key and opened it. I hardly noticed that a person, all in black, had come down the stairwell and into the atrium. I didn’t turn to look at that person until I felt the barrel of a gun in my shoulder blade.

I froze.

“Come quietly and you won’t get hurt,” a man’s voice said.