“She’s getting back to me.” Cooper can’t be sure Lewis will accept, or that she’ll be capable of doing what he needs her to do. She’s just a kid. But he remembers the way she looked around at the university buildings and the training fields, like she was memorizing them. He thinks she’ll bite.

“I get Bell,” Raymond is saying. “Bell makes sense. But I don’t know about this girl.”

Cooper is aware that whatever he says right now, he has to believe it.

“Emma Lewis has experience with these types of offenders. She understands the way they think and behave. She’s not fooled by them—she knows what they are.” He thinks of Emma’s dark-stained sweatshirt, her twitchy reactions. Her bright, fierce eye. “We can’t be sure until she settles in. But I think she’ll do just fine.”

CHAPTER TWO

In the lonely hours of the morning, Emma jerks awake in the dark, gasping.

It takes her a few moments to remember where she is, to get the outlines of her body solid. She’s all right. She’s home. Her T-shirt is damp. She’s safe. Breathe.

She lies there with her eyes open, listening to the sound of katydids outside. She hasn’t had a bad dream in months. This dream was not Cooper’s fault, although it’s hard not to feel resentful. Emma allows herself to clutch the resentment tight for the space of a few heartbeats, then deliberately releases. It’s okay to acknowledge the emotions, but that sort of thinking is not useful to her.

She flicks the switch on the lamp on the nightstand, throws off the bedclothes, and goes to change her shirt and collect her robe.

Downstairs, the kitchen of her parents’ house is lit up like always. Emma fixes herself a glass of milk with one of her mother’s choc-chip cookies. She’s just sat down at the kitchen island when her older sister, Roberta, shuffles in.

“Don’t eat all the cookies.”

“It’s after midnight,” Emma points out. “Teen magazine says I can eat as many cookies as I want after midnight.”

“Teen magazine…” Roberta humphs, opening the fridge for the milk. She’s pulled a quilted nylon dressing gown over her men’s flannel pajama pants and Blondie T-shirt. “Fine, but you’ve gotta help me bake replacements tomorrow.”

“I can do that.”

“I’m bummed you’re not staying the whole week.”

“Eh, summer classes.”

“Eh.”

Emma eats her cookie. Robbie pours milk into a glass and returns the carton, careful not to bang the fridge door closed. If the door bangs, it jostles the Boston fern their mother has balanced in a saucer on top of the fridge.

“You’re not gonna tell Mom and Dad about the fed guy, are you?” Robbie finally says.

“It’s not worth freaking them out.” Emma goes to the sink, takes an empty glass from the draining board, and half fills it with water. “He just wanted to ask me something.”

“New set of questions?”

“No, weirdly enough.” Emma walks to the fridge and balances on tiptoe to pour the water from the glass into the soil around the fern. “It was more like… a job interview.”