I’d been given five minutes with Imogen and it was nowhere near enough. For most of it she’d cried in my arms. Her ordeal had brought everything flooding back and she cried for her dead sister; to be frank, so did I. Then she’d told me all about her latest nightmare and I toughened up again. The man who’d taken her had intended murdering her in order to punish me, but first he wanted to sate another desire. He was the worst kind of monster imaginable.

When my time was up, she wouldn’t let go of me. I gently extricated myself from her arms. Then I leaned in to kiss her on the forehead, just as she lifted her head to look at me. Our lips brushed. She’d blinked in astonishment, but then watched me all the way to the door. Something in her gaze made me regret the intimacy, but that was overwhelmed by the sense that it was the right thing to do.

Now we were in Walter’s private jet heading south. There was me, Rink, Bryce and Walter, plus two who were Walter’s bodyguards. They sat behind us, iPod wires trailing from their ears.

“Whoever or whatever he is, he’s just the man doing the dirty work,” Walter said. “Someone is behind him, and it’s important we find out who that is.”

“I’m still going with Abadia,” Bryce said.

“Abadia died.” Walter was sitting in a plush leather chair, one of six in the Leer’s cabin. The plane was strictly nonsmoking but he had a cigar between his teeth. The cigar wasn’t alight. He pulled it out and studied the tip. “He was cremated.”

Walter’s words came back to me from when I’d stopped Tubal Cain: We don’t bury the living. My seat was directly opposite his and I could stare into his eyes. He returned my look, and the skin at the corner of his mouth tweaked. He aimed the cigar at me. “You were there, Hunter. Nice and close. Did Abadia look dead to you?”

Schilling’s rounds had torn cavities in his chest. Then I thought about Jimena and the small boy and I had to shake loose the image.

“He was dead, no doubt about it.”

“So we forget about him and start looking for who’s really responsible,” Walter said. It was a command, and Bryce dipped his head in acquiescence.