“What did Dylan say?”

“He just laid there with his head to the side.” She closed her eyes and demonstrated. Let her mouth grow slack and showed a half inch of pointed, pink tongue. “Pretending to be dead, you know? I said, ‘Cut it out, that’s gross,’ but he refused to talk or move and finally it got to me. I rolled over to him and touched his head and he just flopped, you know?”

“Method acting,” I said.

Puzzled stare.

“It’s when you live a role completely, Michaela.”

Her eyes were somewhere else. “Whatever…”

“How soon into the exercise did you tie him up?”

“Second night, it was all the second night. He was okay before that, then he started punking me. I was letting him because I was scared. The whole thing…I was so, so stupid.”

She folded wings of golden hair forward, masking her face. I thought of a show spaniel in the ring. Handlers manipulating the ears over the nose to offer the judge a choice view of the skull.

“Dylan scared you.”

“He didn’t move for a long time,” she said.

“Were you worried you’d tied him too tight?”

She released the hair but kept her gaze low. “Honestly, I can’t tell you, even now what his motivation was. Maybe he really was unconscious, maybe he was punking me a hundred percent. He’s…it was really his idea, Doctor. I promise.”

“Dylan thought the whole thing up?”

“Everything. Like getting rope and where to go.”

“How’d he pick Latigo Canyon?”

“He said he hiked there, he likes to hike by himself, it helps him get in character.” The tongue tip glided across her lower lip, left behind a snail-trail of moisture.

“He also says one day he’s going to have a place there.”

“Latigo Canyon?”

“Malibu, but on the beach, like the Colony. He’s crazy intense.”