She opened her apartment door to see hundreds of pink roses.
He'd found her.
Patsy dropped her grocery sack, ignoring the sound of eggs cracking and milk sloshing out of the carton. Slowly, she stepped into the apartment, expecting Lucas to appear in front of her, smiling, holding a knife.
"Miss Patsy, your milk is running across the hallway," a voice said somewhere in the back of her mind. Mrs. Anderson, the widow across the hall. "It's headed for my door."
Patsy ignored her and took another step into the living room. So far, there was no sign that Lucas was still here, but he had been.
Suddenly, her home, her haven was a dangerous place, fetid and oily, like a sewer. Even the sight of the quilt hanging on the wall, the one she'd worked sixteen months to finish, turned her stomach.
He'd seen it. He'd touched it.
A single rose stuck out of a hole in a yellow fabric star in the middle. A hole that hadn't been there when Patsy went to work this morning.
Lucas. A knife.
"Your brother was here." Mrs. Anderson came into the apartment behind her. "Nice young man. Very polite. He told me that pink roses were your favorite, and he wanted to surprise you."
He surprised her all right.
Pasting a smile on her face, Patsy turned to look at her neighbor. "He is full of surprises, my brother. Thank you." She gently placed a hand on the older woman's shoulder and guided her out of the apartment.
"I'll clean up the milk and eggs. Don't worry."
"Okay." Mrs. Anderson looked skeptical. "Is everything all right? Why did you drop the groceries?"
"Clumsy."
Patsy closed her apartment door. She had to get out of here and fast.
She took her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. This was one of three phones she had, and there was practically no way Lucas could know about this one, but experience had shown her nothing was certain.
The contact was labeled Burgers That Deliver. When a man answered, Patsy said, "I need my regular order."
The voice on the other end responded immediately. "Be there in ten minutes."
After she hung up, she took the SIM card out of the phone and destroyed it in the garbage disposal. Then with an efficiency that she hated having, she emptied the contents of her wallet, except for the cash, into a small metal trash can and set it ablaze.
When the papers and cards had been turned to ash or bits of melted plastic, she dumped a glass of water on top of the mess. Then, with a resigned sigh, she took the can to the bathroom and flushed the contents down the toilet.
By the time anything official she'd carried with her on a daily basis was gone, the doorbell rang. Quickly, but cautiously, she went and looked through the peek hole.
A tall black man and a slightly shorter white woman waited on the other side, but the woman looked down at the destroyed groceries.
Patsy opened the door, checking the hallway in both directions. "Come in."
Matthew walked in, carrying a suitcase. "Lorna's going to take care of the mess out here," he said, not looking at his partner. "Then, of course, we'll send a team in when you're gone."
Seeing him with the suitcase, the full impact of her situation hit Patsy, and she collapsed on the couch.
"I was so careful," she said, dropping her face in her hands and gasping as sobs choked her breathing.
"You were." Matthew sat down next to her, putting his substantial arm around her shoulders. "Five years in the same place. That's nearly a record for the Agency."
"How did he find me?" Patsy didn't try to wipe the tears away. Matthew had seen her in worst shape, and in his position, he dealt with this kind of thing regularly.
He shook his head. "There's no way we can know that unless we took him in and interrogated him." She met his eyes and realized that any questioning of Lucas would not end with him walking away.
"Is that in the plan?" she asked, biting her thumbnail.
Matthew took a deep breath and took his arm away from her. He stood and walked to the other side of the room. "You know that's up to you. This is your fourth move in ten years, all because he found you. Are you ready for this to be over?"
He was asking if she was ready for the Agency to put an end to Lucas.
Surprisingly, the thought that with a word, she could end a person's life bothered her more than she would have thought. Could she live with the knowledge that she'd sentenced someone to his death, even someone who had been making her life a living hell for years?
"It's not something you have to decide today," Matthew said. "This is the fourth time he's found you after a move. The Partners may even take the decision out of your hands. Lucas has shown that he's not willing to let the past be in the past."
Patsy stood up, shaking her head. "Can we leave now?" She rubbed her upper arms. "I don't feel safe."
"We're here," Matthew said, and an instant later, Lorna came into the apartment.
"The mess is cleaned up, and the remodel team are already going through the building, cleaning up any loose ends."
"Thank you, Lorna," Matthew said. "You'll take care of the bedroom."
"Of course." She smiled at Patsy. "You know the drill. I'll be right behind the van."
Patsy nodded and took a deep breath. "I guess this is it."
"It is." Matthew picked up the suitcase. "Let's go."
She followed him out of her apartment and closed the door behind them.
