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argument. She always won, because Adrian had discovered within the first few minutes of their years together that it gave him far more pleasure to agree with her than to fight with her. Adrian said, “You were so beautiful when we were young. I never could understand how someone as beautiful as you wanted to be with me.”
    She laughed. “Women know,” she said. “It seems a mystery to men, but it isn’t to women. We know .”
    Adrian hesitated. He thought for a moment that tears were welling up in his eyes, but he didn’t know what he had to cry about, other than everything.
    “I’m so sorry, Cassie. I didn’t mean to get old.”
    That sounded crazy. But it also made a curious sense to him.
    She laughed. He closed his eyes for a moment to listen to the sound. It was like an orchestra reaching for symphonic perfection.
    “I hate it that I’m all alone,” he said. “I hate it that you’re dead.”
    “This will bring us closer.”
    Adrian nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think you are right.”
    He looked over at the bureau. The prescription scripts from the neurologist were gathered in a pile. He had meant to throw them away. Instead, he picked them up.
    “Maybe,” he said slowly, “some of these will buy me a little extra…”
    He turned, but Cassie had vanished from the bed. Adrian sighed. Get started, he told himself. There is so little time left.

7
    She closed the door behind her and then stopped. She could feel a rush of excitement within her, and she wanted to savor it for a moment.
    Linda generally arranged things in precise order, even her passions. For a woman with extravagant desires and exotic tastes, she was dedicated to routine and regimentation. She liked to plan her indulgences, so that every step of the way she knew exactly what to expect and how it would taste. Instead of dulling sensations, this quality heightened them. It was as if these two parts of her personality were in constant battle, tugging her in different directions. But she loved the tension that it created within her; it made her feel unique, and it made her into the truly extraordinary criminal she believed herself—and Michael—to be.
    Linda imagined herself to be Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie to Michael’s Warren Beatty Clyde. She considered herself to be sensuous, poetic, and seductive. This wasn’t arrogance on her part as much as it was an honest appreciation of the way she looked and the effect she had on men.
    Of course, she didn’t care for anyone who stared at her. She cared only for Michael.
    She slowly let her eyes sweep over the basement room. Stark white walls. An old brown metal frame bed with a white sheet covering a dingy gray mattress. A portable camp toilet in the corner. Large overhead lights threw unrelenting brightness into every corner. The still, hot air smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant and fresh paint. Michael had done his usual good job at fixing everything up for the start of Series #4 . She was always a little surprised by how handy he had become—his expertise was with the computers and Web operations that he had studied in college and graduate school. But he was also adept with an electric power drill and a hammer and nails. He was a regular jack-of-all-trades. Perhaps that was why she loved him as deeply as she did.
    Linda believed the two of them were linked in a way that defined special.
    She paused and took a detective’s inventory. What could she see in the room that gave the basement any sort of recognizable identity? What might show up in the background of the webcast that indicated anything about where they were or who they might be?
    She knew enough to realize that something as mundane as a pipe fitting or a water heater or a light fixture could lead an enterprising police officer in their direction—if one ever chose to look. The pipe fitting might be measurable in inches, not centimeters, which would tell this clever and deeply imagined detective—Linda liked to try to envision