Silent Stalker by C. E. Lawrence Page A

too alluring and easily dashed—he couldn’t afford that particular emotion. It was easier to expect the worst. Hope involved wanting, which meant opening up to the possibility of more pain.
    Rehearsal was already in progress when he arrived, so he slid into a seat at the back of the auditorium. They were running the scene with Antipholus of Syracuse and his twin brother’s wife, portrayed by Sara Wittier. She was actually quite good, not playing it for laughs, taking her character’s dilemma seriously. Antipholus was played by Keith Wilson, the leaner of the two dark-haired twins, and they made a good-looking couple onstage. Lee noticed that Keith wore a long navy blue cloak—part of his costume, perhaps? He remembered the blue fiber found on Caroline’s body and made a mental note to tell Butts.
    Davillia watched from her director’s chair, sipping from a metal thermos and picking at a bran muffin. She stopped the actors from time to time, suggesting stage movement or alternate line readings. She was surprisingly sensitive and thoughtful, given her larger-than-life persona. They were in the middle of a scene in which Sara’s character, Adriana, confronts Antipholus of Syracuse, who she thinks is her husband. He is actually her husband’s twin brother, and of course has never seen her before. Also onstage was Ryan Atkins, playing Antipholus’s servant, Dromio of Syracuse.
    Davillia put down her thermos and approached the stage, her bracelets jingling. She wore an emerald-green kimono with a long string of multicolored beads. Lee imagined her bedroom closet full of dozens of various colored kimonos.
    â€œSara, darling, start that speech again, will you?” she cooed in her affected accent. “But this time really let your emotional reaction to his strange behavior fuel your entrance more—all right, lovey?”
    Sara nodded and they went back to the beginning of the scene. Davillia returned to her chair and her coffee, delicately plucking off pieces of muffin, using her fingers with their long, brightly painted nails. Sara entered from the wings and stopped abruptly when she saw Antipholus and his servant. Glaring at them, she flung her arms out angrily. Her face reddened as she sputtered her lines furiously.

    Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;
I am not Adriana nor thy wife.

    When Sara had finished the entire speech, Davillia leapt to her feet, clapping her hands like a child.
    â€œYes, yes—that’s it! Brava—see what I mean?”
    â€œYes,” Sara said, blushing and looking pleased with herself.
    Lee studied the other actors onstage. Mindy’s understudy, the young woman playing Luciana, looked on with shy appreciation, and Keith Wilson was smiling broadly. Ryan Atkins stared at Sara with an expression of entranced adoration on his freckled face. His pale blue eyes brimmed with emotion.
    Lee spotted Ryan’s brother, Danny, watching from the wings. The look on his face was very different—his features were frozen in a mask of intense disapproval. Without changing his expression, he wheeled about and disappeared backstage.

C HAPTER T WELVE
    Caroline Porchowsky stepped into the hallway from the overheated apartment and locked the door behind her. She slipped on the lime-colored wool coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. It was one of those bone-chilling February days, the kind that eats right through to your core, though the apartment was so hot she had carried the coat into the hall before putting it on. She felt a little guilty for taking her roommate’s coat without asking, but it was such a lovely color, and Sara wouldn’t be home for some time. Caroline was only going to slip across the street to the bodega and pick up a few things, and she would be back before her roommate returned from her restaurant job.
    Normally Sara didn’t work on Tuesdays, but she had been