She had sought out Danilo last spring to ask for his help when the shipping containers filled with refugee children began appearing outside the small harbor town of Arkösund. He had seemed helpful, even favorably inclined, but in the end he had still betrayed her. He had attempted to kill her—unsuccessfully—and then disappeared underground.

Ever since then, she had been searching for him, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. She hadn’t been able to find a single trace of him in all those months. Nothing. Her frustration had intensified in proportion to her desire for revenge. She daydreamed of different ways to kill him.

She had sketched his face in pencil on a white sheet of paper, drawing and erasing and drawing again until it was a perfect likeness. She had saved the picture, pinned it to a wall in her apartment as if to remind herself of the hatred she felt for him—not that she could ever forget it.

In the end, she had given up on her search for him and returned to her everyday life with the belief that she would probably never find him.

He was gone forever.

Or so she had thought.

Now he stood fifty feet from her.

She felt her body tremble and stifled an impulse to throw herself forward—she had to think rationally.

She held her breath so that she could hear the men’s voices, but she couldn’t make out a single word. They were too far away.

Danilo lit a cigarette.

The worn duffel bag lay on the ground, and the man with the birthmark was crouched down next to it. He pulled the zipper, exposing its contents. Danilo nodded and gestured with his right hand, and both of them went with quick steps through the alley and disappeared down the stone steps toward Strömparken.

Jana clenched her teeth. What should she do? Turn around and go home? Pretend she hadn’t seen him, let him get away? Let him disappear from her life yet again?

Silently, she counted to ten before stepping out of the shadows and going after them.

* * *

Detective Inspector Mia Bolander opened her eyes and immediately clapped her hand to her forehead. Her head was spinning.

She got out of bed and stood there naked, looking at the man whose name she had forgotten, who lay on his stomach with his hands under a pillow.

He hadn’t been completely with it. For twenty minutes, he had paced the room and repeated that he was a waste of space and didn’t deserve her. She had told him again and again that of course that wasn’t true, and in the end she had convinced him to get into bed with her.