"It's no big deal."

"It is." She smiled. "It's a really big deal. . . ."

Leaning over, she kissed him again, a damsel rewarding her knight.

He needed to tell her about the trip to Bishop Gadsden. That he'd taken one of the photo albums and why. He needed to ask her about what Ann Davidson had said, too. But she sank against the window, eyes closed, and he decided it was better to let her sleep.

They drove the rest of the way to her apartment in silence. He listened for her breathing, but the air-conditioner drowned it out.

They paused at a red light, the intersection illuminated by streetlights, and he glanced over to study her gamine profile, the indolent upturn of her nose. The graceful jaw. The long neck. The swell of her chest. The flat waist. The long legs. The fringe around her cutoffs flickering in the A/C.

She'd probably throw the shorts away now, not wanting to be reminded of this day. He looked at her legs again. It was a crying shame.

Reaching the apartment brought memories of their unintentional night together, sleeping side by side in the parked car. This time, he rubbed his knuckles softly against her cheek until her eyes opened.

"Are we here?"

He hoisted her bag from the backseat and came around to open her door. Glancing at the parking lot, he realized they still needed to collect her car, but the errand would have to wait. She wasn't in any condition to drive. Maybe he could phone Wash once she'd settled in and the two of them could make up a convoy.

She got a few paces ahead of him, anxious for home, unsteady as they ascended the stairs. He put his hand out in case she fell.

When she reached her door, she leaned against the wall, eyes closed. "You have the keys."

He dug through the jumble of items in the messenger bag, chasing the sound of clinking metal. Finally, his fingertips hit on the telltale ridges.

He aimed for the lock and missed, but the door cracked open anyway. "Rylee."

"Hmm?" She opened her eyes.

He nudged the door open farther.

"Wait here," he whispered.

Feeling along the wall, he flipped on the lights, then froze.

Some forms of destruction seem random and impersonal. A tornado rips through, leaving carnage in its wake, but inspecting the debris never yields a message from the storm. Nature did what it did but had nothing to say.

The scene in Rylee's apartment was not like that. What he saw spoke. It screamed. And he recognized the voice all too well. Her couch disemboweled, her books scalped of their covers, the shelves upended and some of them snapped in two, as if over a knee.

Every cd case opened, the discs methodically broken. Her dvds smashed. The kitchen had gotten a good shake, rattling everything, the contents of the fridge still fresh on the linoleum floor. Something viscous and ruby which he hoped was Kool-Aid had dried sticky on the surfaces. Liquid oozed from behind the closed microwave door.

He advanced farther, turning on lights as he went, his body contracting into a crouch.

The rags strewn across the bedroom floor had been clothes once.

Now they lay tangled in odd bundles, almost corpse-like, studded with shoes that had gummy scars where their heels had been.

The red dress from their visit to Nonie lay razored across the bed. The sheets themselves had been cut up beyond recognition.

A drawer dangled from the nightstand like a cigarette from an ingenue's lips.

He turned, half expecting Rylee to be on his heels. But she stood petrified in the apartment doorway, hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide. He motioned for her to stay there. He needn't have bothered.

She looked like she never planned to move again in her whole life.

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. He approached the pockmarked door, his feet raising water from the carpet. Pushing it open, he peered inside.

The bathtub ran, water pouring over the lip. He sloshed across the vinyl floor and shut off the knobs. The surface of the water stilled.

He saw something floating out of the corner of his eye. He yanked the curtain back.

Near the top of the tub, a soaked bra, striped pink and white, frilled around the edges. Near the middle, the matching thong.

As if a woman had been submerged here, and her body dissolved, leaving only her underwear behind.

His gut twisted. Turning around, he recoiled, slipping backward. He grabbed the curtain for support, only to have it and the rod crash to the floor. Cold water spilled onto his shoes and jeans.

The words were inscribed in thick black marker on the toilet lid's underside. The letters emphatically uppercase.

YOU'RE MINE.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Last time he broke in without leaving a trace. Just an unspoken message in the sheets. Now he'd made sure there was no mistake. She stared at the words, not reading but hearing them. An angry snarling shout, the kind that leaves flecks of spit behind.

In spite of the warm draft from the open apartment door, she stood shivering on the bathroom threshold. No matter how tightly she held herself, the tremors wouldn't go. "What does it mean?"

Logan turned at the sound of her voice. "You shouldn't be in here."

His skin was pale as the white plastic tub. She gazed into the water and saw that another message had been left behind.

Her bottom lip trembled. "What does it mean?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"Does he think I'm his?" A fit of coughing seized her, threatening to flood her throat.

He reached for the lid, lowering it as carefully as a museum exhibit.

She leaned over to prop her hands on her knees, taking quick, erratic breaths. "Who is this guy? What does he want?" She looked at the water lapping at her feet. Pictured the carnage of her apartment. "It's not my things, obviously . . . because he completely destroyed . . . everything I have in the world."

Suddenly he was before her, his arms around her. And she realized she was shaking. Convulsing with horror. Her throat raw, her eyes burning in the sockets.

She squeezed herself against him, digging her hands into his muscled back, pressing her face into his chest.

She couldn't speak. She could hear a sob in her throat, but couldn't fathom where it was coming from.

He kept saying it was all right, all right-whispering the formula into her ear, a magic spell he kept getting wrong.

Then it all rushed out of her like so much tepid bath water, the emotion spilling onto the floor, leaving her wet and dripping, but also numb.

She slipped out of his arms, not wanting to be touched. In the mirror, the eyes looking back at her were dark and empty and glistening. The skin flushed pink.

He splashed to the side of the tub, staring down. "This I just don't get."

Her hand dipped gull-like through the rippling surface, snatching the bra and thong, balling them in her fist. She ripped them free of the water and, turning, slung them to the far side of the bedroom.

"Rylee." He touched her shoulder gently. "Is it some kind of message?"

"Yeah," she snapped. "It means, 'I'm a sick pervert.' It's the universal symbol."

"Sorry. I just thought-"

"No, I'm sorry. Look. I didn't tell you everything. Remember when he stole those things from my gym bag? That's what he took."

"Ah." He was still treading carefully. "Those exact ones?"

"Not those exact ones. I threw them out. I wasn't going to wear them after . . ." And then she stopped, realizing what she'd just let slip.

"You threw them out? But I thought he took them, that was the whole-"

"He took them," she said. "And last night, he brought them back."

"Last night? While we were on our date?"

"Yes. He broke in and . . . made the bed, and he put them back in the drawer. I was going to put a new deadbolt on today, but before I could, your baseball buddy threw me in jail."

He was silent a long time. Finally he took her by the arm, leading her out of the bathroom, sitting her on the edge of the bed. When he leaned down, she could see how calm and reasonable he was trying to be, from the measured expression to the constraint in his voice. Like he was on the bomb squad and just needed to figure out which of her wires to pull to keep her from exploding.

But she wanted to explode. To kick and claw and spit and curse and- "We have to call the police," he said.

Wrong wire.

"We have to do what?" She jumped to her feet, letting him have it with a glass-shattering voice, a radioactive glare.

He didn't flinch. "What choice is there?"

"You're talking about the people who wanted fifty thousand dollars to let me out of jail? The ones who think I pulverized the Davidsons' house and trashed my own car? What are they gonna do when they get here? Arrest me for vandalizing my own place?"

Breathless, she took in the destruction around her. No, the desecration. The remnants of her life with Nonie at Folly Beach. Pretty much everything she had in the world. In tatters and rags. Torn apart.

And for what? To send some twisted message? A message that was supposed to mean something?

"I'm sorry." He slipped his hand into hers. "We have to call them, Rylee. You don't see what I see. There's no way they're gonna walk in here and think you did this to yourself."

She started to argue, but there was a squeak at the door.

"Rylee?"

It was Liz.

"Tell her I'm in here," she said, pulling her hand from his.

Logan turned, but before he could get a word out, Liz was already rushing through the doorway to the bedroom, her hands glued to her face like that painting of the Scream.

"What happened?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She flung herself at Rylee, wrapping her arms tight. Cooing, shushing, rocking until Rylee again broke into sobs. Straight from the gut.

They went to Liz's apartment after Logan called the police. Rylee curled up on the futon, wrapped an afghan around her shoulders, and buried her head in her hands. The thought of detectives going through her shredded things was just as repugnant as the monster who'd done the original damage.

Liz hovered like a timid hummingbird. "Can I get you something? You hungry? Or how 'bout a shower? You wanna get cleaned up?"

Rylee got tired of shaking her head. "We need to call Mr. Sebastian. He won't want me talking to the cops without him here."

As she spoke, she looked to Logan, expecting him to fly into action. But he was strangely still.

"What's wrong?"

He ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't know. Nothing, I guess."

She sighed. "Would you rather I call Karl?"

"No." Picking up her phone, he scrolled through it and stepped outside, shutting the door softly behind him.

When the police arrived, she stayed with Liz. At the thought of all the damage, her eyes started to melt again. Liz put an arm around her.

"I'm just glad you weren't home when it happened," Rylee said.

A knock at the door, and a middle-aged lady slipped through. Her short black hair and unflatteringly tight pantsuit meant business. A badge dangled around her neck. She introduced herself, but Rylee missed her name. She expected the woman to be gruff, but instead she spoke to Rylee in the softest of tones.

"Is Detective Campbell going to be here?" Rylee asked.

At the sound of his name, the woman detective gave the thinnest of smiles. "Any minute now."

Rylee nodded, then clasped her hands together. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I've called my lawyer, and I'd prefer not to say anything until he arrives."

The woman nodded. "Under the circumstances, I understand." After she left, Rylee heard her lecturing another officer out on the walkway.

"You know something?" she was saying. "I don't believe everything I read in the papers or see on tv. I look at the scene. And until the scene tells me otherwise, that girl in there is a victim."