That would be when Pam, her mother and stepfather came to New York a few years ago. Her parents had another terror plot in mind but Lincoln and Amelia stopped it. Her stepfather was killed, her mother arrested. Pam was rescued and went into foster care in the city.

She thought back to the day when she and Seth had met. Yes, she’d thought he seemed too familiar, too nice, too infatuated. But she’d fallen hard anyway. (All right, Pam now admitted – maybe Amelia was right that, thanks to her early years, she was desperate for affection, for love. And so she’d ignored what she should have noticed.)

Pam now stared at the tattoo gun, the vials of poison. Recalled that his victims had died in agony.

What delightful toxin had he picked for her?

That’s what was coming next, of course. He’d kill her because, Lincoln had said, she might have to be a witness in the trial against the Stantons. And he’d kill her because their plan had failed and his aunt and uncle would be in jail for the rest of their lives.

He wanted revenge.

He now looked once more at the design he’d painted on her cheek in her own blood.

Happy …

She thought of the time they’d sat on this very couch one rainy Sunday, a rerun of Seinfeld on TV, Seth kissing her for the first time.

And Pam, thinking: I was falling in love.

A lie. All a lie. She recalled the months he’d spent in London, in a training program for an ad agency opening an office here. Bullshit. He was back with his aunt and uncle planning the attack. And, after he’d supposedly returned from the UK, she hadn’t thought anything his odd behaviors. Assignments that kept him out all hours, phone calls he never took in her presence, having to leave for meetings at a minute’s notice, never taking her to meet his co-workers, never inviting her to the office. How they’d communicate through brief texts, not phone calls. But she hadn’t been suspicious. She loved him, and Seth would never have done anything to hurt her.

She forced the crying to stop. This was easier than she’d thought. Anger froze the tears.

Seth … Billy began filling the tube with a liquid from a bottle.

She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to die that way. Pain. Nausea, fire in her belly, stabbing up to her jaw, puking, puking, but finding no relief. Her skin melting, blood from her mouth, nose, eyes …