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Steaks and shrimp would remind me of Therese.

Sex against walls and crammed in showers would remind me of Therese.

Drinking lemonade would always remind me of Therese. It was odd that her handler had chosen that to be her distress word. I guess he knew a little something about her habits.

I felt like I was learning something about her habits, too.

Even her bathroom habits.

I looked at my phone. Ten minutes had passed, but she hadn’t come out.

No one had gone in or out.

Should I worry? I waited for my usual warning senses to kick in and tell me if something was wrong. I’ve always known when something was wrong, just a quiet sense, a stubborn sensation in my gut.

There’s nothing, now.

Nothing at all.

Because... Because are you different now? Did you trade your abilities for her love? For your soul?

God, Reginald, what if that’s why golems are made without these cumbersome, beautiful, forbidden things like souls to mate and hearts to love? What if, because of her love, you’re broken now?

Panic sets in, hard and fast. Twelve minutes.

Maybe the shrimp was bad.

Maybe something else was bad.

Sluggishly, as if I were fighting something unseen cloaking me, muting me, my gut started singing the Fight or Flight song, and when it comes to Teri, I’ll always choose fight. “Excuse me!” I hammered on the door of the ladies’ room. No answer. I pounded again and pushed into the women’s restroom without waiting to hear a reply.

The first sight that greeted me was a door at the end of the narrow corridor separating the tiled wall from the row of stalls. It was cracked open, letting a sliver of sunlight battle the flickering fluorescent bulbs.

“No.” I choked on the word. An exit I hadn’t covered. Hadn’t known about. Maybe it was just a sunny room? Could she still be in the building? Gotten turned around and taken the wrong door?

Behind me, aggravated, high-pitched noises were squeaking and shouting, protesting the fact that a man had barged into an empty women’s room.

I didn’t care. I ran straight toward the door at the end of the hall. “Therese!”

Nothing. “Teri!”

“Listen, sir!” A voice behind me earned a shove backward, and then I burst through the door—into blinding sunlight.

It led to the outside, to the side parking lot.

The bodyguard’s worst nightmare—his charge missing, gone, because he failed to check the perimeter, he let her out of his sight.

“Holy fuck.”

Someone had taken Therese.

Chapter Fifteen

The last thing I recalled was a voice saying, “Don’t move and you won’t get hurt.”

Something hard stabbed into my hip as I washed my hands in the store’s steel and sterile bathroom that smelled like bleach.

Then the light changed, it got hotter, and I found myself leaning heavily on someone’s arm. I tried to call for Reggie, but all I could do was whimper and grunt.