Frustrated, I slammed open the door to the stairwell and clattered down toward ground level. I didn't feel like standing still in an elevator. Didn't feel like standing still period. God help whoever got in my way tonight.

This wasn't like her.

Usually Kate worked from a position of knowledge. She was deliberate: she weighed things and didn't react without first getting the facts. I couldn't understand this.

I would have expected her to clear her throat, cross her arms and tap her foot, waiting for an explanation before acting. Instead, she'd jumped in like she was me.

She'd always believed me. Believed in me. Even when she'd hardly known me.

What in the world would make her leap without looking first?

I guess maybe seeing another woman wrapped around me would do that. If it had been me walking in on her and another guy, I'd have asked questions later, too.

Never before had I felt like the hapless husband: the one who always does the wrong thing, or never knows what's going on, with a perpetually angry wife. It was a strange feeling.

She knew me.

Knew better.

And she had still jumped to the wrong conclusion.

True, we'd both been a little distracted the last couple of months – her with the kids and finishing the book, me with Mom's issues and Dad's issues, the kids and just life in general. Maybe a little more distant than usual...

It had been a while, and that wasn't like her either.

But still...how could she ever think…!?

I slammed out the door on the first floor a little too roughly.

"Hi, Mrs. Peterson." I gave an abbreviated but apologetic wave at the elderly lady waiting for the elevator. She nodded at me, looking only slightly less alarmed.

Dammit, Kate, you didn't let me get a word in edgewise. I'd only been able to complete one two-word sentence.

What made things even worse was that I could have stopped it all instantly just by saying "Kimmy." But she'd had me so off-balance that it hadn't even occurred to me to do that.

I slapped aside the front door and stepped outside, breathing in the city I wanted nothing to do with right now.

Serena Belliard.

I should have told Kate about her from day one. If I had, the issue would have been resolved with a mere introduction.

She'd been after me for six months, and it had taken two for me to notice.

And I hadn't even been the one to notice.

Rob, the front desk guy, told me that she'd been asking around about me. He said quite a few people had noticed that Serena seemed to be wherever I was when I was there.

He warned me. "Watch out, man. Guard yourself. She's poison."

"Personal knowledge?" I asked

He shuddered. "Just what I hear."

I made a conscious effort to steer clear of her, which only seemed to make things worse. She never engaged me, just always seemed to be there. Next to me, behind me – in roll call,in the hall, any time I had an idle moment. She would inevitably be in the locker room always, inexplicably, half-dressed. Don't get me wrong; the first time…I noticed. But after that she might as well have been Sully. She got a lot of attention, just not mine. In spite of the fact that she was pretty, there was something ugly about her. Something just under the surface. Something ominous.

Besides.

It was Kate.

Just Kate.

Always Kate.

I'd only let Serena into the apartment that afternoon because she was in uniform. Civilian clothing would have made me a little suspicious. But, apparently, that had been her plan.

We'd been having an innocuous conversation about a shift change – trading one day for another or something like that.

The minute she'd heard Kate's key in the lock she'd unexpectedly had me in a vise-like embrace. She'd been frightfully strong for someone so small. Not to mention the fact that she'd surprised me.

She'd done it deliberately. To drive a wedge between me and Kate. Her timing had been absolutely perfect.

But why?

Just because her little seduction routine at the house hadn't worked?

I thought about all the things she would have to know and do to be sure this would work out the way it had. That was an awful lot of deliberation and planning for just me.

Was there more to it than that?

Was I missing something?

The locker room was empty.

I was really late.

I didn't want company tonight. Didn't want to have to make small talk, so I asked if I could go out alone, but was denied because I 'looked like I was in one of my moods' and could 'probably use someone to keep me in line'.

Dammit.