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He stared uneasily down into the darkness. Through the front windows, light from streetlamps cast weird shadows, outlined the mystifying shapes of furniture and shelves.

Nothing stirred.

He’d been half-asleep. Maybe he’d dreamed those creepy little noises. Maybe there were mice in the walls. Gulls in the walls. Ghosts in the walls.

Maybe he was more nervous than he thought.

He shivered. The air wafting up from the shop was very cold. Cold and…tasting of snow. Andy felt a flash of alarm. That was outside air.

Someone had opened a door or a window.

He was not imagining anything. Someonewasin the shop.

Just as Andy absorbed this unwelcome realization, the bottom step gave a loud and unmistakablesqueak.

Chapter Seven

“You better show yourself. I’ve already phoned the police.” Andy directed his cell-phone flashlight down the staircase and felt his scalp crawl at the gleam of eyes staring back at him.

“No, you didn’t.”

That voice.

Andy’s heart stopped and then began to hammer like a five-bell alarm.

He reached out, found the light switch. Pallid overhead light illuminated a tall, broad-shouldered man with curly black hair and pale-blue eyes.

“Marcus.”

For one weird split-second, he was actually relieved. Not some unknown, murderous intruder after all. Just Marcus.

Marcus, clad all in black, leaning against the wall and grinning up at him. “You’d never take a chance of calling the cops and being wrong. Notagain.”

That was true, and what an awful thing it was when the person you’d trusted with your secrets turned against you.

“What are you doing?” Andy asked.

Marcus just grinned more widely, like it was all a big joke.

But it wasn’t a joke. Marcus, in the dead of night and dressed like a bargain-basement hitman, had just broken into Time in a Bottle. That wasn’t funny. Or normal. That was…terrifying.

But that was the point, right? Marcus equated fear with control, and Marcus was all about control. Control of others, not self.

“You’ve got to be crazy.”

And Marcus didn’t bother to answer that either.

Andy started to thumb in 911, even as he wondered if he was really going to do this, could really go through with havingMarcus arrested. There was embarrassing, and then there was excruciating, and having to explain his disastrous relationship with Marcus, to Ruthanne or, worse, Chief Millard, would beexcruciating.

But what choice did he have? Was there another way to handle this? He racked his brains as he pressed the last digit and waited for the phone on the other end to ring. He really,reallydid not want to do this, but he couldn’t let this go. If he let Marcus get away with this…

Marcus started up the staircase, not rushing, enjoying every moment of Andy’s reaction.

Andy backed away, willing the phone on the other end to pick up.

This was not happening, could not be happening—but that was what everyone thought when the unthinkable happened…

“Andy!”