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get them all over with, so she could go back to the beginning and begin once more with fear, since she figured fear was what she probably ought to be feeling again.
    Faux Randy’s eyes narrowed at her question. “You know what I want, Lila.”
    “No, I don’t, actually,” Marnie told him. “The first guy I met tonight wanted to give me this stupid manuscript. The second guy wanted to take it away from me. You seem to want to shoot me. At this point, I have no idea what to expect. So I’m asking you again. What do you want?”
    Faux Randy settled his whole hand on the butt of his gun. Uh-oh. She’d been joking about that. Still, he did seem to be weighing the prospect of shooting her against the prospect of answering her question, so maybe there was still hope for a good outcome. Or, at the very least, an outcome that didn’t involve gunfire.
    “First,” he said, “I want to know where you’ve been for the past five months.”
    Well, that was easy enough to answer. In a vague, I’m not-giving-out-my-address-to-strange-in-more-than-one-sense-of-the-word-men kind of way.
    “I’ve been here,” she said.
    Maybe if she could keep him talking long enough, a real security guard would come along. Not that she trusted a single person on the entire planet at this point. Except maybe Bob Troutman, who, she knew, would be a slimy little git no matter the circumstances. Which currently made Bob Troutman the only human being on the planet Marnie would trust at this point. And of all the things that were going to keep her awake tonight, that one had to be the most troubling.
    “Where’s here?” Faux Randy asked.
    “Cleveland,” Marnie said. “Ohio. I was born and raised here. Save five years in Columbus to go to college, I’ve always lived here.”
    “Right,” he replied in a way that indicated he believed not a word of what she said. “So I guess we are going to have to do this the hard way.” And with that, he did pull his weapon, and he pointed it right at Marnie’s heart.
    Okay, cycling back to fear again.
    “Look, this is nuts,” she said. She tried to hold up her hands, but thanks to the manuscript, could raise one only to shoulder height. Still, she turned both hands palm out. “I don’t understand any of what’s happened tonight, and all I want is to be left alone. If it’s the manuscript you want, take it. But please, just leave me out of it.”
    “Oh, it’s definitely the manuscript I want,” he told her.
    “And I definitely will take it. But you know full well there’s something else I want. And I’m going to take it, too.”
    “What more could you possibly want?” Marnie asked.
    “You, Lila,” the man said without hesitation. “I want you.”

CHAPTER THREE
    A T HEARING THE ROUGHLY uttered declaration, every one of those emotions went zinging right through Marnie again. Even lust, briefly, which said a lot about her so-called standards. But instead of going back to square one this time—fear—she put on the brakes at calmness. In spite of the gravity of her situation, she sensed something about this man that prevented her from feeling true fear.
    She had no idea why, but her instincts told her he wasn’t going to hurt her unless she badly provoked him, and she’d always been a strong believer in instincts. The way she saw it, human instinct had survived from caveman times, even when the overhanging forehead and unibrow had evolved into much nicer lines. Well, for people other than Bob Troutman, she meant. There had to be a reason for that. Other than that Bob Troutman was a Neanderthal, she meant. So she’d learned long ago to trust her instincts, and her instincts had never let her down.
    The man released the safety on his weapon with a deft flick of his thumb and sharpened his aim.
    Of course, there was a first time for everything.
    “Please,” she said, spreading her fingers in entreaty. “There’s got to be some way to get this all straightened out without anyone getting