Now he also heard murmuring voices and could tell a number of people were in the building. From a door opening farthest from him he could make out a pale face that stared directly at him with wide-open, scared eyes.

“Axel, I just want to talk to you,” Henrik said.

The man took a step back.

“Stand still,” Henrik said. “I just want to talk.”

Instead the man slammed the door. Henrik heard quick steps across the floor and knew that everyone was fleeing. He fumbled for his cell phone and requested reinforcements as he ran after them.

* * *

The door creaked as Jana Berzelius unlocked her storage space and stepped inside. Her eyes scanned the small room. The wooden bench, the wall closet with the padlock open. The pale yellow walls.

But...where were her boxes? The boxes that contained evidence of her secret past.

It took a second for her to comprehend that the bench was empty; the boxes gone.

The shock and confusion made her suddenly short of breath. Her thoughts whirled around in her head, and she broke out in a sweat. Her back, palms and forehead became damp. She shut her eyes tightly, hoping that the boxes would be there when she reopened them. But they weren’t.

She was having a hard time collecting her thoughts.

On the floor lay a sketch of a face. Danilo. The one she had drawn herself.

It wasn’t there by coincidence. It was a greeting.

She closed her eyes, sank to the floor and put her face in her hands. Danilo had come into the storage space and stolen her journals, her secret journals, her most important belongings.

But how had he known that she was storing everything here? Had he been watching her?

She got up suddenly and examined the door, but there was no indication of a break-in. He had probably picked the lock.

She stood in the middle of the room, feeling naked. She had never before felt as vulnerable and powerless as she did in this moment. He had everything in his hands, proof of a past that could cost her her whole career, that could cost her everything. Absolutely everything.

But what did he want with the boxes? Were they his insurance that she wouldn’t do something he didn’t like?

She looked at the sketch.

She thought about her decision to keep him out of her life, to move on. Now she again stood at a crossroads.

The decision was easy this time. She had previously fantasized about his death, but not anymore. Now she began to plan it.

He was going to regret having started this.

* * *

Henrik Levin didn’t like the dark but forced himself not to think about it as he ran through the basement hallway, his gun drawn in pursuit of those who were fleeing.