Simple and routine.

But it wasn’t to be. John insisted on talking. In a different way, and about a different subject than he had ever spoken of before. After thirty minutes he showed no sign of slowing down. He seemed filled with remorse. And Erin believed him.

And, strangely, she was as horrified by this turn of events as she was elated.

3

“YOU MUST BE the hardest working woman on this campus,” said Lisa Renner. “And that’s really saying something.”

Erin Palmer smiled. “Okay, so I’m a bit driven. I confess. But I don’t think I’m that bad.”

They arrived at their destination, a cozy Greek restaurant on the outskirts of campus, and waited to be seated.

“Are you kidding me?” said Lisa. “Sharing an apartment with you is like having an apartment to myself.” She grinned. “Except that some mysterious stranger is nice enough to pay half the rent. It’s a good deal if you can get it.”

Erin laughed. Actually, she felt as though she had gotten the better end of the deal. She couldn’t be more thrilled to have found Lisa Renner. Erin’s roommate of several years had done the unthinkable two months earlier—she had finished her Ph.D. and had taken a postdoc on the other side of the country. Erin had been wrapped up in her research as usual, and had been slow to realize that the few people she was close enough with to want as a roommate were happy with their current living arrangements, and she was forced to advertise for someone to room with. Urgently. Either that or learn how to beg for money on street corners.

Graduate students were notoriously overworked and underpaid. In her case, she received some funding from grants and for teaching undergraduate courses, but she would have to get a substantial raise just to be considered poor. Lisa, a third-year history graduate student who also found herself running low on funds, had come along at exactly the right time seven weeks earlier, and they had hit it off immediately.

Lisa was possibly the sweetest girl Erin had ever met. She was hardworking but spontaneous. She was relentlessly upbeat and full of life, both qualities that Erin knew she needed to work on. At twenty-four, she was three years younger than Erin, exactly the same age that Erin’s sister, Anna, would have been, and Erin was surprised by how quickly she’d come to love this quirky, endearing history student.

“Okay. I work late a lot,” confessed Erin. “But I have been getting better since you moved in. I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? On a Monday. Having an actual lunch with a friend at an actual sit-down restaurant.”

As if on cue the hostess appeared and led them to a small, isolated table against the window.

When they were seated, Lisa shook her head slightly and pursed her lips in a classic what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you gesture. “I do appreciate you coming to lunch with me,” she said. “But I had to practically put a gun to your head to get you to do it.”

“Well I’m glad you did,” said Erin. “Keep forcing me to remember I’m a human being.”

Lisa brightened. “Well, you teach once a week, right? So why don’t we do this every week on your teaching day?”

Erin realized that while this might have seemed impossible only three weeks before, now it was actually worth considering. Because the unimaginable had happened. She had achieved the results she had been working toward.

Perhaps.

Preliminary results were breathtaking, true, but they were still preliminary. She would need to confirm and refine these results for several months by doing careful, rigorous, statistically significant science. Only then would she be able to shout eureka, if only to herself—and to Hugh Raborn. But if her initial success could be duplicated, repeatedly, she really would be able to throttle back, enjoy life a little. But she couldn’t agree just yet, and certainly not without a little banter. “Lunch every week?” she said in amusement. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”

“It’d be good for you,” said Lisa. “You just admitted that yourself. Just cut your office hours in half and use this time to bond with your roommate. Come on, does anyone ever visit you during your office hours anyway?”

“Well, there was this one guy once. In 1943…”

Lisa laughed as the waitress came over to take their order. Lisa ordered a massive plateful of food, while Erin ordered a gyro sandwich and water, declining to add an appetizer or at least a side dish or two as Lisa urged her to do.

“If I had your figure,” said Lisa as the waitress left, “I’d be ordering everything on the menu.” She frowned. “Which probably explains why I don’t have your figure.”

Erin suppressed a smile. “Come on, Lisa. You’re not in the least overweight. I bet we weigh exactly the same.”

“Yeah, but you’re a few inches taller, and your weight is, ah … distributed better.” She sighed. “Let’s face it, if I were going into a prison, I wouldn’t have to wrap gauze around my chest every day like you do. My breasts would hide out just fine in that ugly, baggy outfit of yours.”

“From what you’ve told me, Derrick doesn’t seem to have any problem with your figure.”

Erin’s roommate raised her eyebrows. “He does seem to be a bit insatiable, doesn’t he?”

Derrick was finishing up an MBA, and he and Lisa had started dating just four weeks earlier—but they were seeing more and more of each other and the trajectory looked promising.

“So did he call you today?” asked Erin.

Lisa beamed. “He did. I think I really like this guy. I mean really like him.” She shook her head and frowned. “But you’ve really freaked me out, Erin. Before I met you, I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word psychopathy. I would have said psycho-pathy instead of psy-cop-athy.”

Lisa gazed up at the sky as if pondering a long-ago memory. “Those were the good old days,” she said. “Seven weeks ago. When I was blissfully ignorant of not only the pronunciation of this word, but the fact that fricking one percent of the fricking population is fricking psychopathic. Now I’m totally paranoid. I’m seeing psychopaths everywhere. I mean, take career politicians. Are there any who aren’t psychopathic?” She shook her head. “Thanks, Erin.”

“That isn’t fair. You asked me what percentage of the population were psychopathic. I didn’t bring it up. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

“Yes,” said Lisa emphatically, but with an amused twinkle in her eye. “I really like this guy,” she added. “But he does fit the characteristics of psychopaths you told me about. He’s bright, handsome, smooth, totally at ease in social situations, articulate…”

“Sounds like a real monster,” said Erin wryly.

“I’m serious,” complained Lisa. “Didn’t you say these people are great at manipulating you to like them?”

“Look, just because psychopaths fit a certain profile doesn’t mean that normal people can’t fit that profile also. In fact, far more normal people have these qualities than psychopaths. They just have a soul as well.” She raised her eyebrows. “Which is always a nice feature.” The corners of her mouth turned up into an amused smile. “But sometimes a pickle is just a pickle.”

“As opposed to a psychopath?” said Lisa.

“Right.”

Lisa considered. “Okay. But he still could be one, couldn’t he?” She looked intently at Erin. “You’re always so busy on the weekend with your ninety-hour-a-week work schedule, but this coming weekend you’ve got to meet him. I don’t care if I have to take him to your lab and pull you away from the computer. I mean, if anyone would know if he was a decent guy or a monster in hiding, you would.”

The waitress appeared with their food, set it down in front of them, and left.

“Hey, even the experts can be fooled,” said Erin. “Fairly easily. I mean, I’d have a far better chance than you would of figuring it out, but I wouldn’t be infallible. Did you Google this guy?”