Books and magazines had been strewn all over.

Somebody had been looking for something. Or maybe Lucas was just a terrible housekeeper?

Her gaze fell on the far door, her ears anxious for more signs of the intruder who was tearing up the place. She crossed the tiny foyer in small, tentative steps and stopped at the corner of the kitchen pass-through.

An angry sound, like the shaking of a crystal chandelier in an earthquake crystallized in the silence. It was a twinkling, agitated sound, one she'd have said was a curse if there had been words.

"Who's there? Come out here before I call the cops!" Annabelle knew how stupid it was for a perfect stranger to be threatening to call the police to an apartment she herself had practically broken into. But before she could make herself leave, another, completely different twinkling sound rang from the bedroom.

"All right, I'm dialing," she bluffed. Annabelle was drawn to the commotion in the bedroom. Comforted that the sound didn't remind her of the rustling of sheets, she was certain someone was searching Lucas Riley's bedroom. She also knew in another situation, she'd be out the door and really calling the cops, but this time, she hesitated, oddly bereft of fear.

She took step after step down the hallway, toward the intruder. She wanted to see the person. It was so important to see who this was.

The twinkle chimed again--this time with the sound of command.

"That's so odd," she whispered. There were no words, but the meaning underlying the twinkling sounds was clear.

She hadn't stopped moving down the hallway, and now approached the door to the bedroom. It looked pretty much as she'd have guessed a single man's bedroom would look, not that she had much experience in that area.

Okay, no experience, but she set that problem aside for now and gazed around the room.

A plain double bed--no headboard--sat against the wall, small tables on both sides, surfaces swept clean. The broken lamp on the floor explained the crash she'd heard earlier now. The bed had an appearance of permanent mess, as though it hadn't been made up in weeks. A medium-sized dresser faced the bed on the opposite wall, its drawers hanging open, empty. It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened to the contents. Clothes littered the floor.

She scanned the room for another exit, but saw no way the intruder could have escaped. The utter stupidity of her actions, coming into the bedroom alone, struck her in a flash.

Whoever had done this was still in the room.

Annabelle swallowed a large lump of apprehension. Her gaze settled on the closet, a small one with folding doors. She'd lived in enough apartments to know how small the closets could be. Whoever was in there couldn't be very big.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, surfacing just now, was the reporter's instinct that whoever it was had something to do with Lucas.

Well, duh. She shook her head in self-derision. This is really stupid, Annabelle. Get out of here.

She turned to go -- fully intending to hotfoot it out before she became an FBI statistic -- when a sound stopped her in her tracks, a twinkling sound that made her want to smile.

A laugh escaped her. "Come on now, who's in there? I'm not scared, so you might as well come out." Not quite believing herself, Annabelle approached the closet and pulled on the doorknob, folding one-half of the door back.

A furious jingle rang through the air and the clothes hanging in the closet rippled like the wake of the Titanic. Then three sparks flew out of the closet right by Annabelle's head.

She squeaked, her first real charge of fright raising her voice to soprano territory. She slapped at her hair, sure sparks from a fire were about to set her ablaze.

But there was no fire. About to push aside the clothes and see what was going on in the closet, Annabelle stopped, hand in the air, and turned slowly toward the door leading to the rest of the apartment.

Two, perfect, twinkling, shimmering spots of light flew out the door.

Just like Tinkerbell.

She stood staring.

Annabelle shook her head to clear it. Tinkerbell! For heaven's sake, get a grip!

She should have gotten some sleep last night. Surely that was all this was. She was tired and the sparks of light were only the result of fatigue.

She had a job to do. She applied herself to picking up the clothes and laying them across the bed, looking for a clue to Lucas's whereabouts, a matchbook from a bar, a take-out menu, or ticket stubs from a porno house, anything.

Finding nothing, she went out into the small kitchen.

The sink overflowed with unwashed dishes. After dismissing this poor housekeeping as only more substantiation for the bachelor-slob myth, Annabelle looked again. Then she tried to raise the top dish, using only one fingertip in an effort to avoid the mess. Five dishes stuck one to another as though super-glued.

Ugh.