Thora makes a face. “I don’t think we know anything. I think we’re both just wired to see possibilities. Other ways things could have been, if the world was different. If we’d made different choices.”

López shakes his head. “I don’t think they’re glimpses of what might have been. I think they’re clues, pointing us to a larger truth.”

“Ah,” says Thora in exaggerated understanding. “Of course. The big picture.”

López stops in his tracks, his face earnest. “I believe we were meant to work together,” he says. “To be here, in this place, at this time. The things it seems like we remember—I don’t think they’re memories at all. I think they’re part of a message. Directing us toward each other, since before we ever met.”

“A message from who? From God?” Thora shakes her head. “Sorry, don’t believe in him.”

López frowns. “But you must want to explain it.”

The truth is, she does. But she doesn’t want to get dragged into a theological discussion with her notoriously argumentative partner when they have a job to do. “In the words of my father the philosopher,” Thora says, “the world is a bloody weird place. You and me are far from the weirdest things about it.” She focuses on where they’ve stopped: between two alleyways, both leading through to the next square.

“Which way?” López asks.

Thora looks from one to the other, fighting a strange unease. She wishes she could split herself in two. Send one Thora down each path: catch up with the one who succeeded, erase the one who failed. “You pick.”

“You’re in charge, remember?” López says with a sly smile. “No pressure. Only innocent people’s lives.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic?”

López laughs.

“Left,” Thora decides, and starts walking, stomach already lurching with the conviction that she’s chosen wrong.

“Left it is,” says López with a disappointed sigh. She ignores him and moves on down the alleyway, one hand on her weapon. Then she sees.

She stops dead, presses back against the wall. “Wolfie,” she says softly.

López catches her up. “What?”

She points ahead. López tenses. The silhouette of a man, head in his hands. Thora can’t see his face, but he meets the description she was given: he’s the right height, with a shaved head and an FC Köln football shirt.

“Left it was,” López breathes into her ear.

The smell of smoke in his hair makes her want a cigarette. She laughs silently. “It was a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Guess we’re just lucky this is the universe where you got it right,” López teases her. He starts forward, then pauses, hand on his radio. “Maybe we should call for backup.”

Thora shakes her head. “He’s one drunk guy with a knife. We don’t need backup.”