“Lousy coppers,” Dorcas muttered resentfully. Her resentment came from long experience; she and her late husband had been card sharks and pool hustlers.
Violet laughed. “Has anyone actually said that in real life in the last fifty years?”
“I’m not too old to put you over my knee, young woman.”
“But you’re too slow,” Violet said, hobbling off quickly and leaving Dorcas behind.
An hour later….
Violet sat glumly on the sagging pea-green couch in the living room of Dorcas’ tiny apartment. Dorcas was out buying groceries, which was good, because that meant she wasn’t there to say “I told you so.” She would have, too. And she’d have done a little dance while she said it. Violet loved Dorcas, but Dorcas could be a mean old lady sometimes.
The receptionist at Clotham & Taylor had looked at Violet in horror as she limped through the door. Violet had tried to explain the near miss with the car, but it hadn’t seemed to help.
She’d watched the interviewers’ eyes glaze over. The job interview had lasted five minutes and ended with, “Thanks, we’ve got lots of other candidates to speak to, if we need any further information, we’ll call you.”
Violet’s laptop pinged. She picked it up off the old, scratched coffee table, and flipped it open.
A message appeared on her screen in huge, bright-red letters.
You’re dead, bitch.
And then the message disappeared.
Violet went cold.
The stalker was inside her computer.
It felt utterly creepy and terrifying, as if the person were there in her house.
“What the hell, universe?” she yelled to nobody in particular.
This made no sense at all. She was a dead-broke marketing graduate. She didn’t have any angry ex-boyfriends; hell, most guys barely gave her a second glance. She certainly hadn’t inspired any stalkers.
She didn’t come from some Mafia family; her parents had been teachers who’d died when she was in her teens. She hadn’t offended anyone, that she knew of. She didn’t owe anybody money other than the federal government, and she was fairly sure they didn’t send assassins.
And yet somebody had repeatedly tried to kill her. And if that person was able to hack into her computer, that probably meant they knew everything about her. Including where she lived.
She glanced at the unopened invitation on her desk. She’d gotten half a dozen of them in recent weeks. They all came from a place called the Starcrossed Dating Agency. A few months earlier, her best friend Allison had met a man through Starcrossed and moved overseas to marry him. The agency specialized in matching women up with wealthy men from Europe. It would have sounded weird and sketchy to Violet if she didn’t keep getting enthusiastic emails, texts and phone calls from Allison about how great her new guy was.
Allison had tried to talk Violet into signing up at Starcrossed too, but Violet had been a month away from finishing up her marketing degree, so she’d declined.
Now an alarming thought occurred to her.
If the person who was stalking her knew where she lived, they might threaten Dorcas too.
Maybe if she signed up for this dating agency and met someone, they’d fly her overseas.
It wouldn’t really be false pretenses. She was single. Very, painfully single. She hadn’t had a decent date in years. Most of the men she’d met in New York were obsessed with chasing after skinny models and actresses, and so fixated on dating apps that they barely noticed when they had a real woman sitting across the table from them. Always chasing the next good thing, and clumsy, chubby, frizzy-haired Violet was never the next good thing.
So yeah, if she met someone, she’d be open to a relationship.
And this message on the computer made it painfully clear: she had to leave the city, to make sure that Dorcas didn’t turn into collateral damage. With no job and no savings, she couldn’t afford to do it on her own.
So the next morning, she went to Anders Tower in midtown Manhattan, where the dating agency was located. Dorcas, who was suspicious of everyone and everything, insisted on tagging along with her.
“If anyone tries to roofie you, I’ve got my cane. And my pepper spray.” Dorcas waved her cane in the air menacingly.
They were ushered into a waiting room with a dozen other hopeful prospects, and a short while later, a very tall man came out to meet them. He introduced himself as Madok. He looked to be in his fifties, with thick, dark hair shot through with gray. Madok looked like the love child of a linebacker and a basketball player, on steroids. He wore a gray wool custom-tailored suit, which fit him amazingly well despite his height and bulk.
