Under the Microscope. Jessica Andersen

that he would take the case.

      Not to be near her, but to exorcize her.

      Which led to another realization. He’d already decided to take the case. For the company. For himself.

      “Fine. I’ll do it.”

      He hung up the phone, then glanced around the bare apartment, which seemed so much emptier than it had an hour before. He picked up the folder Raine had left, which was prominently marked with her address, the Rainey Days office address and several phone numbers.

      Logically, he knew he should review the data and make a few calls from the apartment, or maybe wait until the next day and work out of the Caine and Vasek office downtown. Instead, he cursed and headed for the bedroom, where there was a mattress on the floor, a few boxes full of clothes and a duffel he kept packed for emergencies.

      Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way to the scene of the crime.

      On his way to see her.

      RAINE SPENT THE TWO-HOUR DRIVE from New York City to New Bridge, Connecticut, trying to convince herself that everything was going to be okay.

      She failed.

      She was too aware of the vehicles in her rearview mirror, too aware of being jumbled up at the idea of working with Max, being near Max.

      “This is business,” she said aloud as she passed the line into North New Bridge, the suburb where she’d rented a small house. “Strictly business. Nothing personal.”

      Then again, it had been business when Max had watched over her in Boston General. She’d been hospitalized partly because of the pregnancy and its complications, partly because a killer had stalked Max’s boss at the lab. Max had appointed himself her de facto bodyguard for a time. It had been business, not personal, but she’d developed feelings for him just the same.

      “I was pregnant. It was hormones. I even convinced myself I was in love with Erik for a while there.” When the words echoed back at her, she turned up the radio to drown them out, to drown out the knowledge that while she’d quickly talked herself out of the infatuation with her boss at FalcoTechno, she hadn’t been able to dismiss Max Vasek’s memory so easily.

      Now it was the man himself, not the memory, who haunted her thoughts as she pulled into the driveway beside her small white house.

      The lights were off when she let herself in, prompting her to grumble about needing to reset the automatic timer. She was a few steps inside the door when she noticed that the burglar alarm was solid green rather than blinking red.

      “What the—”

      A dark blur swung through her peripheral vision and a savage blow caught her behind the ear, driving her against the wall. Panic spurted alongside pain as the darkness grew arms and legs, and a man’s weight pinned her.

      “Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”

      Then blackness.