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that.”
    He nodded, too, his own warm, benign smile so at odds with his stark, raving lunacy. “Thank you, Lila. Oops, I mean…Marnie.” He winked again, and she tried not to flinch. “I know where to find you now,” he added. As if she really needed for him to put that fine a point on it. “And I’ll contact you again when the time is right.”
    Now there was something to look forward to. She held up the hefty manuscript. “I, um, I’ll read this tonight,” she said again, since he didn’t get the hint the first time and leave.
    “Good,” he said. “Take good care of my opus. Marnie.”
    “I will,” she told him. “I promise your opus is safe with me.”
    His smile went kind of sentimental and satisfied and serene at that, and his expression softened to the point where he looked almost lucid. Relief, Marnie realized. He looked profoundly relieved about something. As if by taking the manuscript from him, she had just freed him of a burden that had been almost too much for him to bear.
    He leaned in close again and said quietly, “I knew not to believe what they were saying about you, Lila. I knew you could never do what they said you did. I trust you completely. I always have. And I’m so glad you’re back. They need you.”
    Strangely, there was something about the way he said it, and the way he looked at her, that made Marnie feel honestly grateful for his trust. Something that made her want to promise him she would do anything for him in return. Suddenly, he didn’t seem mad at all. In fact, he seemed quite sane, and quite sincere. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out to touch his shoulder, the physical contact feeling surprisingly nice. Surprisingly comfortable. Surprisingly comforting. It was the oddest thing.
    “I will take care of this,” she told him as she held up the manuscript, “whatever it is.” And she was astonished to discover that she meant exactly what she said. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore, okay?”
    He nodded and smiled again, then lifted a hand in farewell. “I’m glad it’s with you…Marnie,” he said. And without another word, he turned and walked away.
    Marnie stood motionless in the middle of the deserted parking lot as she watched him go, mesmerized by his steady, purposeful stride. Not once did he look back, clearly content with how their exchange—whatever it had been about—had gone. She waited for him to approach one of the half-dozen cars still scattered in that direction, but he kept walking until he reached a hedgerow at the edge of the parking lot. She watched, amazed, as he pushed the branches of two bushes aside and stepped through them.
    On the other side of that hedgerow was a park, she knew, which eventually spilled into woods. All the houses near the mall were in the other direction—and none was within comfortable walking distance for a man his age. She couldn’t imagine where he was going.
    Strange. Very strange.
    She looked down at the thickly stuffed envelope in her hands and, for the first time, noticed writing on the outside of it. Nothing intelligible, mostly a bunch of doodles that didn’t make sense. Turning it over, she saw the flap was fastened with one of those winding cotton cords that was whipped into a figure eight over and over again. Marnie told herself to go back into Lauderdale’s and call mall security. Instead, she took the end of the string between thumb and forefinger and began to unwind it.
    She was just freeing the final figure eight when she heard the scuff of a shoe over the asphalt behind her.
    When she turned, she saw a man standing there who was much larger, much younger and much more menacing than the one who had just left. And where the first man’s smile had been sentimental and satisfied and serene, this man’s smile was feral and forbidding and frightening.
    “Hello, Lila,” he said. “You naughty girl, where have you been? Opus has been looking all over for you.”

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