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downtown Austin. She dropped her briefcase and coat on the wooden bench beside the door and kicked off her sensible flats. Then she locked her deadbolt and fastened the chain.
    Home.
    She was out of her suit jacket in two seconds. She un-tucked her silk camisole from her slacks, crossed the living area, and dumped her mail onto the stone-topped bank of cabinets that separated the kitchen from the rest of the loft. Just walking through her apartment improved her mood. It was her island of tranquillity. Her first weekend here, she had painted the walls celadon green and bought wheat-colored sisal rugs to add warmth to the Saltillo tile floors. The soft colors relaxed her.
    She pulled open the refrigerator and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with a few sips remaining. It had been a long, tedious day, wrapped up with a two-hour faculty meeting and a three-hour stint in the library scrounging up slides for Monday’s lecture. She was ready to unwind and shift into painting mode.
    Fiona emptied the remaining wine into a glass andperched on a bar stool so she could thumb through her mail: the usual flyers and bills, plus a letter from her grandfather, who lived in nearby Wimberley. His letters were easy to spot because of the spare handwriting—always in black ink—and the faint pencil lines he drew with a ruler before addressing his envelopes. A former structural engineer, her grandfather had an extreme Type A personality, but Fiona adored him, which was more than she could say for the rest of her family. Despite their fifty-year age gap, she and Granddad knew each other well. Fiona knew, for example, that the envelope from him would contain a clipping from the San Antonio Express-News detailing some misfortune that had befallen a single woman living alone somewhere. That would be it. No letter, not even a sticky note. Just an article he hoped would make her settle down and marry some nice young man.
    Fiona sighed and tossed the letter aside. The only other item of interest was a plain white business envelope hand-addressed to “Glass.” It bore a return address she didn’t recognize in Binford, Texas. She took a paring knife from her chopping block and sliced open the top.
    A small slip of paper fell out, a sheet from one of those pocket-size spiral pads. Fiona picked it up and read the wobbly block lettering scrawled across it: get ready bitch. ill come? u.
    She dropped the note on the counter. Then she snatched up the envelope again and reread the return address. “Binford.” The postmark said “Binford” also. She didn’t know of any prisons in Binford, but that didn’t mean a prisoner hadn’t written this. She’d received hate mail before back in Los Angeles—different from this letter, though. Those disturbing missives had been mailed from the home of a convicted murderer’s brother, and they had ceased after Fiona moved to Texas. She hadn’t received anything threatening in nearly two years.
    God, could this be happening again? Was she going to spend the next six months looking over her shoulder and dreading every trip to the mailbox? She didn’t have the stomach for it.
    She grabbed the portable phone off the counter and dialed a number she knew by heart.
    “Devereaux.”
    “Nathan, it’s Fiona.”
    “Well, speak of the devil.” His voice sounded cheerful, meaning he wasn’t on duty.
    “I have a question for you. Do you know of any jails or prisons in Binford, Texas?”
    “Binford, huh?” His tone became serious. “That’s in east Texas. No lock-up there, unless you’re thinking of the town jail, which I would guess has about one cell and a cot. Why?”
    She paused, reluctant to tell him but knowing it was pointless to lie to a man who’d been a homicide detective for the past ten years. “I got a letter today.”
    “Threatening?”
    She chewed her lip. “Maybe ‘harassing’ would be a better word.”
    “What did it say?”
    “I’ll show it to