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.............