James Patterson - 7th Heaven

“Fifty-pound box of files . I just got my key into the door lock when this arm reached over from inside the car and pushed the door open for me.”

“Before this car thing, did you tell him to leave you alone?”

“Yes! Did I ever!”

“Okay, then, it’s illegal for him to be inside your car,” I said, negotiating a lane switch, passing a rental car whose driver leaned on the horn and gave me the finger.

“You ready to swear out a complaint?” I asked Yuki. “He’s going to go public. So think about it.”

There was a moment of static-filled silence as Yuki considered the media ramifications.

“This guy is sick , Linds. He talks to me like I’m a character in his book. He’s twisted and maybe dangerous. He got into my car . What’s next?”

“Okay,” I said, pulling over to the curb. I took out my notepad and wrote down what Yuki had told me.

“You’re going to have to go to civil court in the morning, get a restraining order,” I said. “But effective now you’ve filed a police report.”

“Tomorrow morning ? Lindsay, Jason Twilly wants to scare the hell out of me – and he’s doing it!”

WHEN I REACHED Twilly’s suite on the fifth floor of the St. Regis Hotel, he was waiting in the doorway, a cockeyed grin on his face, his hair disheveled and shirt untucked and unbuttoned. The fire exit door slammed at the end of the softly lit hallway. My guess, it was Twilly’s paid-by-the-hour guest leaving in a hurry.

I showed Twilly my badge, and he fastened his eyes on the V of my tank top, skimmed the cut of my jeans, then took a slow return trip back to my face. Meanwhile, I was taking in his amazing room – leather-textured walls, a window seat with a great view of San Francisco. Very impressive.

“Working undercover, Sergeant?” Twilly leered.

He’d scared Yuki with this act, but it enraged me .

“I don’t think we’ve met, Mr. Twilly. I’m Sergeant Lindsay Boxer,” I said, putting out my hand. He grasped it in a handshake and I pulled his arm forward, twisted it high up behind his back, and pushed his face against the wall.

“Give me your other hand,” I said. “Do it, now .”

“You’re joking .”

“Other hand.”

I cuffed him, frisked him fast and rough, saying, “You’re under arrest for criminal trespass. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” When I finished informing Twilly of his rights, I answered his question: “What’s this about?”

“It’s about your illegal entry into ADA Yuki Castellano’s car. She’s filed a police report, and by noon tomorrow she’ll have a restraining order against you.”

“Whoa, whoa! This is the biggest deal about nothing I’ve ever heard. Her arms were full! I opened her car door to help her!”

“Tell it to your lawyer,” I snapped. I had one hand on Twilly’s arm, my cell phone in my other, and was about to call for backup.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Is Yuki claiming that I’m harassing her? Because that’s crap. I admit I provoked her a little, applied a little pressure just to get her going. I’m a journalist. We do that. Look. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we talk? Please?”

I’d checked Twilly out, and his record was clean. I had a moment of free fall as my anger evaporated. A stern warning would have been appropriate. Now that I’d cuffed him – that media flap Cindy had warned Yuki about?

It was going to go down.

I could already see Twilly spinning this “bust” to Larry King, Tucker Carlson, Access Hollywood . It would be bad news for Yuki, bad for me, but it would be stupendous publicity for Twilly.

“Sergeant?”

I had to hit rewind. I had to try.

“You want to avoid a court appearance, Mr. Twilly? Leave Yuki Castellano alone. Don’t sit behind her in court. Don’t tail her in supermarkets. Don’t enter her car or premises, and we’ll put this incident aside.

“Yuki files another complaint? I’m taking you in. Are we clear?”

“Totally,” he said. “ Crystal.”

“Good.”

I unlocked the cuffs and started to leave.

“Wait!” Twilly said. He stepped into the other room, with its aqua-striped wallpaper and canopied bed. He snatched a pen and pad from the bowlegged writing desk and said, “I want to make sure I got this right.”

He scribbled notes, then recited my speech back to me, verbatim.

“That was really excellent stuff you just said, Sergeant. Who do you think should play you in the movie?”

He was screwing with me.

I left Twilly’s suite feeling as though I’d been smacked in the face with a shit pie – and I’d done it to myself. Damn it to hell . Maybe I’d jammed myself up, and maybe I was wrong to cuff him, but it didn’t mean that Jason Twilly wasn’t crazy.

And it didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

JOE AND I had a takeout dinner from Le Soleil and were in bed by ten. My eyes flew open at exactly 3:04, the digits projected on the ceiling keeping track of the time as my sickening night thoughts churned.

An image of Twilly’s sneer had awakened me, but his face dissolved, and in its place I saw the burned and twisted corpses on Claire’s table. And I remembered the dulled eyes of a young girl who’d been orphaned by a nameless teenage boy who might now be lying awake in his bed, planning another horror show.

How many more people would die before we found him?

Or would he beat us at this sick game?

I thought of the fire that had consumed my home, my possessions, my sense of security. And I thought about Joe, how much I loved Joe. I’d wanted him to move to San Francisco so that we could make a life together – and we were doing it through thick and thin. Why couldn’t I take him up on that big Italian wedding he’d proposed and maybe start a family?

I would be thirty-nine in a few months.

What was I waiting for?

I listened to Joe’s breathing, and in a while my rapid nightmare heart thuds slowed and I started drifting off. I turned away from Joe, gripped a pillow in my arms – and the mattress shifted as Joe turned toward me. He enfolded me in his arms, tucked his knees up behind mine.

“Bad dream?” he asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I forget the dream, but when I woke up, I thought about a lot of dead people.”

“Dead people in general? Or real dead people?”

“Real ones,” I said.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I would – but they’ve slunk back to the pit they came from. Hey, I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s okay. Try to sleep.”

It took a second to understand that that was a dare .

Joe moved my hair away from the back of my neck and kissed me there. I gasped, shocked at the charge that his soft kiss sent through my body.

I hadn’t expected to feel this tonight.

I rolled over, looked into Joe’s face, saw the glint of his smile by the soft blue light of the clock. I put my hands on his face and kissed him hard, searching for an answer I couldn’t find inside myself. He reached his arms around me, but I pushed them away.

“No,” I said. “Let me.”

I put all of my tormenting thoughts aside. I tugged off Joe’s boxers, interlaced my fingers through his, pressed his hands against the pillows. He moaned as I lowered myself onto him and then I eased off, kissed him until he went crazy. Then I rode him, rode him, rode him, until he couldn’t wait another second – and neither could I. There was the undeniable pull of the undertow, before I was released by great cascading waves of pleasure.