sucked closed, followed by a whoosh, someone moving quickly. She jerked to the right.
It was X, standing two feet away, dressed all in black, his head uncovered. Her knees started to buckle from fear.
“Hello, Kit,” he said quietly, but he made the t sound at the end of her name so hard there was no way to hear it other than as a threat.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she said.
“I won’t—as long as you cooperate.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Why don’t we go inside,” he said, shoving the door fully open with one hand. She thought of screaming as she’d done earlier, but there was no one to hear this time. Just do as he says, she told herself desperately. X grasped her arm so hard it pinched and prodded her inside. Then he shoved the door closed behind them.
She knew for sure now that it had been him earlier. He’d probably been trailing her all day, and after she spotted him, he must have taken a cab downtown, followed someone into her building, and waited in the stairwell for her return.
“Just—just tell me what you want,” she said. Was it her personal info to steal? Or her clients’? He’d surely been the one who’d broken into her apartment, and had probably targeted her from the beginning, just like Ungaro had guessed.
He stared hard at her. Those blue eyes, the ones she’d been so beguiled by, were menacing now, measuring her with cold calculation, as if she were a foe who needed to be brought to her knees. He looked away finally, taking in the apartment. She tried to gauge if it was possible to reach into her purse without him noticing and tap 911 on her phone.
But then his eyes lasered back to her.
“Over there,” he said, cocking his head toward the island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the living space. “Let’s sit down.” He’d dropped her arm but he was right behind her, his body giving off an energy that urged her on. She made her way to the island and perched on the edge of a stool, just trying to anchor herself in some way. As her feet touched the cross-bar on the lower part, she realized her legs were trembling. Get control, she told herself. She had to figure out what he wanted and tell him enough to make him leave.
“Now, give me your phone,” X said, as if he’d read her mind seconds ago. She fumbled in her purse for it and handed it over to him. As he thrust the phone in his jacket pocket, she saw that his scruff was fuller. And he looked weary. He was probably on the run, frenzied. The trick would be for her to play this as shrewdly as possible, to do nothing to add to his feeling of desperation.
“Is it information you want?” she asked. “Is that it? Please, just tell me.”
His eyes narrowed again, this time quizzically.
“No, I don’t want information,” he said. “What I want is my pen.”
“Your pen?” His request seemed utterly ludicrous, as if he’d forced his way into her apartment and demanded her recipe for spinach frittata. And then, she could sense a memory beginning to surface, like something coming loose from a tangle of weeds at the bottom of a pond. His room at the hotel. While he was hunting down ice, she’d checked out his pen, held it next to the one her father had given her.
“You mean the Mont Blanc pen? On the desk in your hotel room?”
“Yes, exactly,” he snapped angrily. “And I want to know why you took it.”
“I admit—I saw it there. But I didn’t take it.”
He took a half step closer to her, making her breath quicken.
“Don’t lie to me. You took it and left another one in its place.”
She looked off, desperately thinking. Had she accidentally switched her pen with his when she’d dropped things to the floor? But the pens had been near identical. How would he have even known? And why in the world would he care?
“Uh, I picked up your pen when you left the room. I have one, too, just like it, and I had mine in my hand. Maybe—maybe I mixed them up by mistake.”
He scoffed. “You just happened to be carrying a Mont Blanc fountain pen around?”
“Yes, I swear.”
Quickly, she reached into her purse. She had the pen in there, nestled somewhere at the bottom. If she turned it over to him, maybe he would leave and never