“Gavin,” he repeated.

A grin spread across her cheeks. “You look more like a Kevin to me—Kevin the Picture Boy. That’s your name.” Then she laughed hard, as though she had just told the funniest joke.

Gavin felt assured that the world would neither mourn nor miss this woman. He lifted his camera and snapped a picture, which made her smile. But this picture wouldn’t be included in the package of photographs that he would give to the bride. This one was for him, a memorial of the exact second that Gavin chose her, a memento to keep in his secret hiding place—with the others.

A groomsman bumped into the bridesmaid, causing her to spill her drink. She turned and slapped the man’s broad shoulder in mock anger. He smiled at her in a way that caused her to lick her lips. And just like that, Kevin the Picture Boy no longer existed.

Gavin lifted his camera bag and walked calmly to the head table, to where the bridesmaid had been sitting earlier in the evening. Leaning down as though inspecting his camera, he carefully palmed the place card with her name on it. When he stood back up, he looked around the room to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t. He was invisible again—just the way he liked it.

He glanced at the name—Sadie Vauk—and slipped the card into his pocket.

Chapter 3

The Hennepin County Government Center hogged two blocks of downtown Minneapolis, straddling Sixth Street like a steel sentinel. The building housed those mechanisms of the justice system that marked the end of the line: the courts, probation, and the office of the Hennepin County attorney—where Lila worked.

On the twentieth floor, Lila’s small, windowless office had no character, but in fairness, she had done nothing to give it any. In the six months that she’d been working there, she had hung no pictures, no plaques, no diplomas. The only item that hadn’t been there when she moved in was the picture of Joe that she kept on the corner of her desk. Lila had chosen not to settle in, just in case things didn’t work out.

She had been hired with the understanding that she would become an attorney in October, once her bar exam results arrived—fingers crossed. For now, her title remained law clerk, one of three culled from a herd of over five hundred applicants, third-year law students brought on board to organize files, write memorandums, and draft criminal pleadings.

The rules permitted new graduates like her to make court appearances under the supervision of a licensed attorney, but Lila’s supervisor, a sharply dressed man named Oscar Hernandez, preferred that she stay in her office, elbow deep in papers. Oscar worked white-collar cases, so Lila spent her time cross-checking accounting forensics and bank transactions, breaking it all down into graphs and exhibits so that a jury could understand.

The other two newbies, both of them men, worked in offices just as small and bland as Lila’s, but they had tacked their law school diplomas to their walls, one from the University of Minnesota, the other from Georgetown.