There was nowhere here for him to get keys cut or buy a lathe or a spirit level or a . . . protractor. (Susan hadn’t exactly excelled when it came to Design and Tech class.)

Old habits died hard, and Susan slipped into the shadows cast by an ostentatious topiary before her target could see her. Hands in pockets, McGraw passed the hedge she was lurking behind with a muted rustle of damp leaves and a faint cheerful hum.

It had been a long day. Milo had already exhausted what little patience Susan had ever possessed, and she was cold and tired and had a backlog of lecture notes to catch up on, and instead she was out in the wilds of suburbia looking at McGraw being happy.

This was too much.

McGraw had effectively ruined Susan’s life by turning up in Sheffield. Now here he was ruining Daisy’s yoga session?

The fiend needed taking down. Right. Now. Self-righteous rage catapulted Susan from behind the tree into a brisk walk behind McGraw, determined to find whatever it was that had put him in such a cheerful mood and destroy it. The road came to a dead end, but there was a short footpath leading to a street that was a lot less affluent than the one Susan had come from. Here the houses were in terraces of four, the sort with as many doorbells as floors and cars parked on the road—student territory.

Seeing no sign of her quarry, Susan drew to a halt just long enough to catch the faintest sound of McGraw’s tenor a short distance away. She saw him then, standing several car lengths down the pavement, phone to his ear, before he turned decisively toward one of the houses and pressed the bell. Fast as a ferret, Susan darted along the road just in time to see the door shut.

Had she been on the job, there were several things Susan would have considered doing next. Check the name on the bell and run a search through the university intranet. Peer in through the window. Concoct a quick disguise, nab a pizza box out of one of the recycling bins, and ring the bell for a wrong delivery.

But no one was paying her to do this. She wasn’t on the tail of a known criminal—McGraw, for all his many flaws, was an honest man—and it was she, Susan, who was in breach of contract.

Following her enemy had been a mistake. But Susan barely had a chance to consider her own foolishness, because there, looming in wobbly silhouette through the glass pane of the front door, was McGraw.