When the sale had gone completely wrong, and the scrubbed-up tweaker had walked up and opened fire on them all, Owen, to his shame, had looked first to Marcelline. He didn’t care about the money. He didn’t care about the painting. He didn’t care about the Anningers. Disappointment was such a rare, bitter treat for them, he often wondered if they actually loved it best of all. No, he cared only to see if Marcelline had known, to see if she had set him up.

He still didn’t know, even now.

When he’d picked her out of the shadows and the movement in the chaos of that night, she’d been curling toward the pavement, hands clawing at her neck, blood already raining down in a narrow torrent as she folded.

The man who’d come with her was already there at her side. At the start she’d introduced him to everyone as Jonathan, and he’d been the one who brought the painting to the meeting. Now this Jonathan knelt next to her. He leaned in and pulled her hand away from her throat, looking, checking, but no. He took her other hand, too, holding them both away from her thrashing instinct to push against the pour of her blood. He just let it flow. Jonathan rose up, prying her fingers from around his wrist. And he ran. When Owen got to her, Marcelline was fading unconscious, no story to tell.

Owen had let him run, and he also ignored the Anningers’ hired help, some guy and some girl who looked like a guy, neither of whom he’d met before—one clearly dead, one rolling around grunting, looking all but done for. He’d lifted Marcelline, his biceps pressed hard into the wound, her blood invisible as it warmed, then quickly cooled, into his black suit jacket.

He had access to essentially every resource of the Anningers. They never asked him to account for anything. He’d made the call with Marcelline dying against his arm to dispatch two warm and upright retainers to retrieve the two cold, dead ones from the lot.

At his place, a quiet doctor and a couple of see-nothing-say-nothing nurses were easy enough to get. They went to work on her. He’d stopped a nurse hurrying past him in the hallway. She’d held a metal bowl grim at the bottom with blood and bits of bone.

Is she alive?

She is for now. She’s hanging in there.

She needs to make it. Do you understand me?

I’m sure she wants to come back to you as much as you want it. I know you’re worried. But love is medicine, Mr. Haig. I believe it. Hold on to that. Have faith.

You’re not getting it—

Ow. You’re hurting my arm.

She needs to wake up long enough to talk.

We’re doing our best, Mr. Haig.