For what? Revenge on a killer?

Belgiovene’s initial reaction to her call had been shock. Only a very select few had his number. Hari had barreled on before he could hang up. It had taken a lot of cajoling and even threatening to convince him to meet her face to face. After all, the whole idea of operating from the dark net was the anonymity it afforded. But Donny’s painstaking and laser-sharp research had provided her with enough info to convince him that his anonymity was a fiction where she was concerned. She had his phone number, she had his address, she knew of his Septimus connection, and even knew that he’d botched his last assignment against a certain writer.

That had been the clincher. No one was supposed to know about the Winslow hit and it convinced him that Hari had somehow opened a direct line into his life. She neglected to mention she’d heard it from the writer himself.

She convinced Belgiovene she wanted to hire him, but only on a face-to-face basis with payment in old-fashioned cold hard cash.

After much hemming and hawing and ranting and raving, he’d finally agreed, probably thinking no one could pull a fast one on him out here in the wide-open space of the Sheep Meadow. But he’d be standing directly over the Prime Frequency generator, with no idea of what lurked below and what it could do.

At least what Hari had been told it could do.

Hari had survived some horrifying experiences in the past twenty-four hours, yet none so unforgettable as giant spider legs springing from a young girl’s back as she pulled on that subterranean door. What sort of madness had spawned that?

And yet the girl herself seemed unperturbed. A different story with her mother. Barbara had blamed the Prime Frequency for changing Ellie, had even attacked the generator.

But if the Prime Generator could do that to Ellie, what would it do to Belgiovene? Would it do anything?

Crazy.

But not as crazy as meeting a contract killer face to face in Central Park.

Knowing things could go south very suddenly tonight, she’d put her IT gal, Casey, in charge of Pokey, made it her responsibility to feed the crab until she got back. She hadn’t told Casey where she was going, and hadn’t said the real issue wasn’t when Hari got back, but if she got back at all.

Meeting a killer. Really? This wasn’t at all like her. She didn’t get involved.

But Donny had pierced her defenses, slipped under her skin. His sense of right and wrong, his moral outrage at Septimus had reached her. The two of them had been marooned together on another planet—dear God, another fucking planet—and endured an attack by alien slime creatures. Even now, so soon after, those words running through her head sounded insanely absurd. And yet it had all happened. And they’d both survived it together.

Two people can’t experience something like that and not form a bond.