That afternoon Miriam went shopping. It was, she figured, retail therapy. Never mind the job-hunting, there’d be time for that when she knew for sure whether or not she was going insane in some obscurely nonstandard manner. It was October, a pretty time of year to go hiking, but fall had set in and things could turn nasty at the drop of a North Atlantic depression. Extensive preparations were therefore in order. She eventually staggered home under the weight of a load of camping equipment: tent, jacket, new boots, portable stove. Getting it all home on the T was a pain, but at least it told her that she could walk under the weight.

A couple of hours later she was ready. She checked her watch for the fourth time. She’d taken two ibuprofen tablets an hour ago and the propionic acid inhibitor should be doing its job by now.

She tightened the waist strap of her pack and stretched nervously. The garden shed was cramped and dark and there didn’t seem to be room to turn around with her hiking gear and backpack on. Did I put the spare key back? she asked herself. A quick check proved that she had. Irrelevant thoughts were better than Am I nuts?—as long as they weren’t an excuse for prevarication.

Okay, here goes nothing.

The locket. She held it in her left hand. With her right she patted her right hip pocket. The pistol was technically illegal—but as Ben had pointed out, he’d rather deal with an unlicensed firearms charge than his own funeral. The rattling memory of a voice snarling at her answering machine, the echo of rifle fire in the darkness, made her pause for a moment. “Do I really want to do this?” she asked herself. Life was complicated enough as it was.

Hell yes! Because either I’m mad, and it doesn’t matter, or my birth-mother was involved in something huge. Something much bigger than a billion-dollar money-laundering scam through Proteome and Biphase. And if they killed her because of it— A sense of lingering injustice prodded her conscience. “Okay,” she told herself. “Let’s do it. I’m right behind myself.” She chuckled grimly and flicked the locket open, half-expecting to see a photograph of a woman, or a painting, or something else to tell her she needed help—

The knot tried to turn her eyes inside out, and then the hut wasn’t there any more.

Miriam gasped. The air was cold, and her head throbbed—but not as badly as last time.