I didn't sleep all that well. Lying wound up in Joe's arms didn't stop my mind starting to drip-feed me images of that guy outside the club. It would start with a squeeze of disbelieving worry that Joe-Moe could have been responsible for killing him, and a hope that he had survived. And then it would bounce from there to the vivid memory of him looking at me through the car window, while I met his eyes and knew for certain that he'd caught me out. And then I'd think about telling Joe, which would bring out a more insidious fear: that he would insist I had to go away, and that in missing him from a distance I'd kick off that magnetic process and lose him forever. The fear of it would lead to hoping that maybe the guy with the gun wouldn't survive, and then I'd feel terrible for thinking it, which would lead me right back to the beginning.

Even when I did sleep, it was fitful and interrupted. At six I crashed out of a weird dream where Axel had been told to kill me by Lucas and decided he'd better do it. I was too wired with the adrenaline of seeing Joe-Moe's brother point a gun at me to sleep again, so I gave up and extricated myself from under one of Joe's arms. He was snoring very quietly, his mouth all slack and totally not-sexy. It was hard not to find it adorable, which was another reason for making a sharp exit.

I pulled my clothes on, a little bit smug about quite how much they'd ended up scattered around the room, and brushed my teeth (with Joe's tooth-brush, which he'd told me to use the night before - cue worry about having bad breath without realising it. I hate being an idiot about that kind of thing). After that I retrieved my phone and started browsing the morning news while the coffee-machine heated up, leaning against the counter and giving my calves a stretch at the same time.

There was, as always, a lot that was wrong with the world. CNN's website was leading with a shooting, and I couldn't even bring myself to read about Syria after the first two paragraphs mentioned two thousand civilian casualties this week.

I was looking for something more cheerful to read when I caught sight of a starry image on the side-bar that I knew well.

It made me feel weird to read the headline: "Astronomers Confirm Nearby System Going Nova."

I clicked through to a too-brief article about Eta Carinae, and wasn't surprised to see that one Dr. Brandon Larsen was quoted in it.

"It's a very exciting occurrence," Dr. Larsen comments. "This is by far the closest supernova we will have witnessed, with the potential effects on the Earth's atmosphere itself, although they are unlikely to be noticeable to ordinary people. It's not an apocalypse scenario."

I could imagine how smug he'd sounded when he'd said it. It was quite hard not feeling like I hated Axel's boyfriend just then, which was not even slightly rational.

It's not you and Joe, I tried telling myself. But as I looked at pictures of those two stars, one blazing brightly and close to self-destruction, I couldn't help seeing the two of us torn apart. It felt like the floor I was standing on was falling.

I jumped when I felt a pair of hands slide around my shoulders. Joe was sleepy and warm, and it did a lot to cut through the chill on my skin.

"It's too cold to be up," he muttered into my ear.

"Look at this," I said, and held the phone up where he could see it.

"Didn't I tell you I don't do reading before ten am?" he asked, but he took the phone, coming to stand next to me with his arm around my shoulders.

"Oh, neat," he said. "You feeling all excited about it, astro-geek?"

He looked at me, sidelong, and I could tell he remembered what I'd said at the observatory.

"I don't know. I still think it's kind-of sad," I answered. I leaned into him as closely as I could, borrowing his warmth through his slacks and nicely tight t-shirt.

He kissed the top of my head. "Just as long as you're only worrying about those poor little stars, and not assuming we're doomed. I'm not keen on you trying to run away again."

"I don't think we're doomed," I said, automatically, and there was a buzz in his chest as he laughed.

"You're such a liar."

"OK," I said, half-smiling. "I feel like it's about fifty-fifty right now. But I'm not going to run away. I promise. You worry about your brother and the crazy criminals. We're just fine."

"Good," he said. "Though you know what'd make us even better? Being in a nice, warm, comfortable bed..."

I tipped my head back and he gave me a slow, warm, sexy kiss.

"I'm not going to argue with that."

I got Joe to drop me at on campus before he took Axel for his train. He'd called up their Uncle and arranged it all. Axel would be collected from Charlotte late in the evening, after a pretty horrific-sounding journey. But anything is better than being hunted down and killed, and Axel didn't complain about it all that much on the way there. He was largely too busy leaning forward to tell me what Brandon had messaged him about the upcoming supernova.

"He sounded pretty busy," he told me, "but hopefully he'll be able to patch me into some of the real-time radar results later on. It should all happen over the next twenty-four hours. I mean, obviously it's already happened. But for us."

By the time I climbed out of the car I was almost beginning to feel positive about astronomical events. Axel's enthusiasm was difficult to resist.

"I'll come find you after practice," Joe told me, through the open passenger-door.

I gave him a smile, which was almost comfortable and optimistic, and then went to shut myself in the computer lab for seven hours and try not to think about either of the Moritz boys too much.

It turned out I did a pretty ok job of that. I was still in the actual coding part of the project, rather than in the dreaded write-up, and it's weirdly possible to zone everything out when you're trying to do something new and get it right. In my case, the project was a modelling one. I wanted to be able to code a quicker way of modelling probable planet characteristics based on the glimpse we get when that planet passes between us and its sun.

It was more complex than the examples we'd been given, and presented a challenge, but I knew that was the only way to make me want to do it. It had to be something I loved, or the project would have been something to put off until after Christmas and then swear over.

I was lost somewhere in a world of C++ when the buzz of my phone woke me up. I looked at it in confusion, realising that it was already four pm and that Joe-Moe was texting to say he was free. I hadn't remembered to have any lunch.

Texting him back, I saw the date on my phone and realised with another jolt that I only had two days left before I was heading home for the vacation. All my worries about being sent away from Joe, and I'd forgotten that I was about to leave anyway. It's weird how easy it is to bury your head in the sand.

I finished up saving my work - which I thought might just be two thirds of the project already done - and logged off. I realised then quite how out-of-it I'd been. The three other students in the lab had all left, and even the reception staff had headed off home. I guess there's not much point manning a desk for one person.

I went to meet Joe-Moe in the growing gloom of the empty courtyard. I was gradually losing the excitement that went with the coding project, and the darkness and the grey clouds overhead added to the realisation that I would have to say goodbye to Joe for a couple of weeks. I felt suddenly down, which is not something I've ever associated with the few days before Christmas.

I climbed onto a picnic table and pulled my feet up onto the bench as I waited for him. The gloom seemed to be settling in, so I did my part 1 feeling-crappy self-care and told myself I'd feel better once I'd had something to eat, and that everything was fine. Then I tried it out loud.

At that point, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye and had a rush of embarrassment. If that was Joe coming along, it was not going to look good if he'd caught me talking to myself. I squinted into the darkness between the Math and Science buildings, expecting Joe-Moe to emerge. But instead of Joe-Moe, I could just make out a much shorter guy wearing what looked like a suit jacket and a scarf. He had a cell-phone to his ear, and he was facing my way.

For a moment, he stayed like that, and then he turned his back quickly and shielded the phone. It was a strange, suspicious action, and I felt a touch of cold.

He's probably just trying to get out of the wind, I thought. And in fairness, the buildings of MIT seem to have a unique capacity for funnelling wind through them. An otherwise calm day can still produce a vortex that was hard to walk against in certain places on campus.

But I still felt uneasy. Maybe it was too much violence in the last twenty-four hours, or maybe it was the memory of that cold gaze through the car window. Whether it was rational or not, I could feel adrenaline kicking in.

I looked around for Joe, feeling a very old-fashioned kind-of need for the big-tough-guy in my life to swagger up and protect me. But instead of Joe, coming the other way towards the courtyard were three figures I didn't recognise from their unclear outlines, one of them a tall, slim girl with her hair piled on her head in a bun; the second a massive, thick-set guy who looked like he was a bouncer in a really rough club; and the third a medium-height guy with not a lot of hair.

They absolutely did not look like they belonged on campus, and they absolutely looked like they were walking my way.

Shit.

I scrambled off the picnic bench and hot-footed it across the courtyard, feeling unbelievably grateful that the nice boots I'd put on the night before were pretty good for jogging in. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to all-out sprint, though. I guess in the back of my mind was a suspicion that I was just being jumpy. So I did an awkward run-walk over to the Math building and bundled inside as quickly as I could.

The building was still as empty as it had been when I left, the bright lights of the entrance-hall the only sign that it hadn't shut down for the holiday season. I thought, briefly, about running upstairs and trying to search people's offices. But I had no clue if any of the lecturers were around, and I didn't think they'd be much good against three possible drug-thugs either.

What I did have in my favour was a swipe-card for the computer lab. With the door locked behind me, they weren't going to be able to walk straight in and off me. It also bought me time to work out whether they were really after me, or I was just being a moron.

I looked over my shoulder as I swiped my card, but there was no sign of them yet. I ducked inside and closed the door, quietly. For good measure, I switched off the lights so that nothing shone through the small glass window in the door, and then I flattened myself against the wall and waited.

It didn't take long to have my worst suspicions confirmed. There was a muffled squeak from the outside door, and then quiet footsteps.

I heard the quiet mutter of a man's voice, and then the girl answering. Her voice was louder, energetic and modulated so that I could hear it through the door as she said, "I don't know. I only know she does math."

There was a twisting, awful feeling in my stomach. I recognised that voice, with its vitality, and its hint of Italian colouring the Boston accent. I'd heard quite a bit of it whilst she'd been all over Joe in her dad's Italian restaurant.

Rita? What the hell?