Later, when Kole and Kasper came to collect him from the local hospital where he’d been stitched up, they informed him a snowmobile had been discovered abandoned at the Canadian border. Months passed without seeing hide nor hair of her while Hudson settled into his new position in White-Collar Crimes, until a few weeks ago, when her mother reopened her bakery, Lynette’s Linzers.

And then, something had arrived in his mailbox, just before he left for Hart’s Pass. Standing at the top of the world now, Hudson opened his memo pad to reveal a plane ticket, tucked inside like a bookmark.

45 MORGAN

Black combat boots tapped on rain-washed cobblestones as Morgan walked in step to the music that percolated through the streets of Dublin. The city had an earthy smell, just minutes after the rain, and she was soaked through. Her clothes were damp beneath her anorak and water dripped from the ends of her dark hair. The sun was shining again, though, bright as a pot of gold and dappling the colorful buildings. A faint rainbow of red, orange, yellow, indigo, and violet ribbons shimmered, showing her the way.

She knew she could find them here, at Dogg & Duke’s, a nondescript pub off the district’s main drag. The cobblestones were worn a little smoother down this way, the buildings characterized by cracks and chipped roofs and the odd graffitied poem now and again, which she loved. It felt like home.

The bar had a teal door and a brass tiger head for a knocker. She paused before touching it, as though it might bite. But in the past six months, she had explored and experienced more of the world than she had in her thirty-one years before, and it would take more than an inanimate object to scare her. Instead, Morgan took two steps back, raised her camera, and took a photo. She’d taken thousands of photos in the time she’d been away. And when she rode on dingy subways and slept in spartan hostels, her photographs of doors and their locks and their keyholes were all she had—and all she needed.

Lowering her camera and closing her eyes for just a moment, Morgan breathed in her new life. It smelled of butter and battered fish. It sounded like fiddles and flutes and pipes. It tasted of freedom.

The warmth of the pub cloaked her like a blanket, fogged her glasses. Entering this new world within a world, she took off her anorak and folded it over her arm as she swam through a crowd that had gathered to hear the band.