“What I called you, after.” I let the memory bloom: the golden girl dressed in gauze and light, a dream to aspire to. Never quite real, even as I’d watched her that night, holding her own in the sheeting rain. If not for the pack and the documents, it’d be easy to believe I’d dreamed her. But here she was, and for a moment, I forgot to demand what she was doing on Daniel’s boat in the middle of the night. My bad for not locking the doors. “ ’Cause of how you put those guys down!”

“Oh.” She rubbed her chin, then smirked. “Right. Guess I did.”

“This is sure a . . . um . . .” I gestured at her vaguely. “Y’know . . . a different look?”

She checked herself out, like she’d forgotten what she was wearing, then crossed her legs, neatly sheathed in a close-fitting black overall. Her black tank top exposed strong, sculpted arms. No makeup, but she didn’t need it. Her skin was pale and smooth, like I remembered. She must have access to sunblock. “Uptown clothes that night. Bait.”

Bait? I didn’t dare ask. “What were they after, those goons?”

“Some stuff I had.”

At last, the tale would be told. “And so you laid it on me.”

She shrugged, an assent. “Needed my hands free, right then.”

“Why not just ditch the pack?”

“Because one of them would’ve scooped it and split, while the other kept me busy.”

“I figured that. So now you want it back.”

Another shrug. She didn’t make for easy chitchat, this woman.

“How’d you find me?”

“Not so hard.”

“I mean, it’s a big city.” I tried a rueful grin. “And we obviously don’t run in the same social circles . . .”

“Got that right.”

Well, fuck you, too, I thought. So much for my imagining us meeting up again and becoming friends. I crossed my arms. “How’d you know who I was?”

She looked quizzical. Then her face smoothed, except for the deeper stress lines at her eye corners. Like, maybe worried I’d already sold her stuff. “Okay. I’m guessing he hasn’t told you.”

“He?”

“Daniel. I’m Hannah, his sister.”

This took me a moment. “Right! The one who gets around a lot!”

Her laugh barely escaped her throat. “Is that what he said?”

She had to be the other side of thirty. I searched her face for the resemblance the brothers so clearly shared. “You don’t look like his sister.”

“Half-sister. Different mother. Mine died.”

“Huh.”

Irritation plucked at the corners of her mouth. “Believe what you like. Here I am. And yes, looking to reclaim my stuff.” She leaned back on her hands, tossing hair out of her eyes with a jerk of her head. “He didn’t say you were sleeping together.”

“We’re not!” Smack on the defensive where she wanted me, never mind what business it was of hers.