“You planned all of this,” Flynn said, “before tonight.”

“Most of it,” I admitted.

“I didn’t plan on going out a bathroom window.

But the rest, yes.

I’ve been planning the rest for six weeks.” And for the first time since I had thrown myself in front of his car, Flynn Sterling-Vance smiled — a faint, sharp, dangerous smile, the smile of a man who has just realized the person he rescued had not really needed rescuing so much as a ride.

I have come to treasure that moment, and that particular smile, more than almost any other in the whole affair, because of what it represented, which was the rarest thing a powerful man ever offers a woman he has found bleeding by the side of a road: he saw me clearly, and revised his estimate upward, and did it without resentment.