Imagination, galloping away on an open prairie first presented him with a Joe who resembled the husband in Sleeping with the Enemy. Maybe Julie hadn't lined up the bathroom towels correctly before leaving for work this morning. When he pulled on the reins to slow it down, it stopped to graze on Jack Nicholson in The Shining, chopping down doors in their big old house. Or, maybe Joe was a drug dealer, and someone had come to bump him off tonight. Maybe Julie was a drug dealer. Maybe Joe was the one who hadn't lined up the bahtroom towels correctly, and Julie had been chopping down doors with an ax, and now she needed an alibi. Maybe she was the rare female serial killer, and Landon was to be her next victim, late night mysterious phone calls being the way she lured unsuspecting men into her trap.

Crazy thoughts. No wonder Laura had left him after less than two years of marriage. No sane woman could ever last long with a man whose brain worked like this.

And the moment Julie appeared through the plate glass, he knew just how crazy the thoughts had been. She looked nothing like an ax-wielding serial killer. She could easily have been a photograph of a runaway teenager on the cover of Time magazine. The picture should have been in black and white, and she should have been sitting under a bridge, gawky teenage legs pulled up to her chest and hugged tight by skinny arms. The rest was there, though: wet brown hair plastered to her head, fear-filled brown eyes the size of silver dollars, no rain gear, wet, wrinkled shirt pulling across her heaving chest.