By Blood Written

“I don’t think you’ll hear from him, but if you do, let me know. And don’t get into it with him. Play along, then let me handle it from then on. Okay?”

“Yes,” Taylor said, looking down at the mess she’d just made. “I will.”

“And call me if you need anything else, or if you just need to talk. And in the meantime, get some sleep,” Hank said.

“You need it. It’ll be the best thing for you.”

“All right,” she said. “I will. And Hank?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. Thank you for calling. Thank you for the dinner and drinks last night. Thank you for giving a damn.”

“No problem, lady,” he said. “S’why I get the big bucks.”

Taylor Robinson went back to work the next day. She was in her office by nine, after a fitful night’s sleep, determined to get her life back. She waded into the mountain of e-mail, contracts, phone messages, manuscripts, and paper that was piled neck-high on her desk. She met with Joan Delaney for an hour and a half, trying to figure out how to handle the detritus of Michael Schiftmann’s career. Taylor was surprised-and then realized that she shouldn’t be-that Michael Schiftmann’s murder trial had sent his sales into the stratosphere. The publisher had never seen anything like it.

They couldn’t go back to press fast enough.

Web sites sprang up all over the world commenting on Michael’s murder case, his books, the details of the Alphabet Man’s crimes. One Web site was running a contest: Match the novel with the murder. Society’s sick fascination with violence, cruelty, evil had never been more exploited.

But in her quiet moments, alone in her office, facing the stacks of work, Taylor wondered if she wasn’t part of the process as well. When she was honest with herself, even she admitted that she couldn’t read Michael’s books; they were too cruel, too twisted. Early in their association, she had even let herself wonder what kind of man could write such things. Like everyone else, though, she was charmed with his looks, his manner, and his style.

Then the money started rolling in. God, the money, she thought. There had never been so much of it. Her family was well-off, she’d grown up well taken care of, even entitled. But she had never seen anything like it. She had to admit that she was as seduced by the money and the fame and the attention as she was by Michael himself; maybe even more so.

She wondered if she would have allowed herself to become so enamored of him if his books had flopped.

No, she decided. No way. But money and fame are seduc-tive and arousing and thrilling, like a drug, like a blinding orgasm.

Blinding orgasms. She blushed. It embarrassed her to go there even in the solitude of her tiny office, but she had never in her life had sex like that. With Michael, her orgasms were not only literally blinding, but blinding as well to a great many other things.

Thank God, she thought, the blindness was temporary.

She forced her mind to go elsewhere. There was work to do. It would be a long, long time before she felt like getting involved with anyone again, if ever. And she never expected-wasn’t even sure if she wanted-sex to be like that again. Sex that good makes you stupid.

She buried herself in her work, opened up the piles of paper and dived in headfirst. At eight that first night, her assistant, Anne, stuck her head into Taylor’s office and asked if she was ever going home. Taylor looked up, distracted.

She hadn’t realized it was so late and apologized to Anne for keeping her.

Days went by like that. After a week, the NYPD stakeout of her building went down to one uniformed officer. After the third day, she began to relax and return to her old routines. She bought food and cooked for herself again. She ignored the news, stopped following anything about Michael’s case. After a while, she could even find herself going a few minutes at a time without thinking of him.

She still refused all calls from the news media, and after about three days, word got around and the calls slowed to one or two a day. There was a famous writer doing a long piece on Michael for Vanity Fair, and another equally famous one for the New Yorker.

“They’ll just have to get along without me,” Taylor told Joan over lunch one day. “I’ve got nothing to say to anyone about anything.”

“Good,” Joan agreed. “Let’s just get back to selling books.”

One big concern was what to do with Michael’s next book.

The Friday afternoon after returning to Manhattan, Taylor cleared enough of the pile away to meet Brett Silverman for lunch. She caught a cab over to Central Park, where Brett was holding a corner table at Tavern on the Green for them.

Brett was already nursing a glass of wine when the maitre d’ led her over to the table. Brett stood quickly and opened her arms, then wrapped them around Taylor hard enough to draw stares from the surrounding tables.

“I have missed you so much,” she whispered.

“Me, too,” Taylor said.

The two sat down as the waiter came over. “May I bring you something to drink?” he asked. Brett pointed at her glass of wine.

“I don’t usually drink during the day,” Taylor said, then added, smiling: “Oh, what the hell.”

“That a girl,” Brett said. The waiter disappeared as Brett leaned in. “Okay, look, let’s get right to it. I have no idea how much you want to talk about this, but I have to ask. How are you? Really?”

Taylor shrugged. “I’ve had some bad nights,” she admitted. “A couple of times when I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. But you know the old saw, that which doesn’t kill you-”

“Beats the crap out of you and nearly kills you,” Brett interrupted.

Taylor found herself laughing in a way she hadn’t in a long time. It felt good, as if a weight had been lifted from her.

“You know,” she said. “You’re right. It feels like this nearly killed me. But it didn’t. I survived. And it feels great to be back at work and back here, and it’s wonderful to see you again.”

Brett smiled back at her, then turned serious. “Have they made any progress toward finding him?”

“You get the same news channels I do, honey. I haven’t heard a word. There’s an FBI agent that’s been really nice to me. We’ve talked a couple of times since I got back. Last I heard, they had nothing.”

“Amazing,” Brett said, then she lowered her voice. “Where the hell do you think he is?”

Taylor shrugged again. “Who knows? He could be anywhere.”

“What was it like when he disappeared? Did they just go nuts down there?”

Taylor nodded. “It was pandemonium. The first thing the judge did was throw Michael’s attorney in the slammer for contempt, then they hauled me in for questioning.”

“You? What the hell did they think, that you helped him?”

“I think they were just more embarrassed than anything else. They should have been watching him a little better.”

“God, I feel like for the rest of our lives, he’s going to be the eight-hundred-pound white elephant sitting in the middle of the living room that no one wants to talk about.”

“I’m okay with it,” Taylor said as the waiter brought her wine. “Really. This is all going to work out. It’s going to be okay.”

The two ordered lunch and made small talk for a while.

Then the conversation turned to business.

“Jack decided to move up the pub date,” Brett said.

“That’s interesting. How come, as if I didn’t know?”

“He’d be crazy not to,” Brett answered. “Look, darling, advance orders for The Sixth Letter have broken all company records. We’ve never had a book come out of the blocks like this one.”

“You know,” Taylor said, a sadness settling over her face,