She’d been waiting for nigh on ten minutes before someone finally came through the revolving doors, and just her luck, he was all paunch in an ill-fitting suit, complete with five-o’clock shadow and a comb-over.

June sighed. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, she supposed. She started toward the building, brushing past the man at the corner. The barest touch—the kind that goes unnoticed amid the jostle and drip of a rainy day—and she had all she needed. He was on his way and she was on hers. She didn’t bother changing, not until she reached the Heights’

front doors.

An older man sat behind a concierge desk in the lobby. “Forget something, Mr. Gosterly?”

June made a short, gruff sound and muttered, “Always.”

The elevator doors opened, and by the time they closed behind her, the reflection in the polished metal was hers again. Well, not hers. But the one she’d started with that morning. Peasant skirt and a leather jacket rolled to the elbows, a sly smile and hair that fell in loose brown curls. She’d picked it off the subway like a girl shopping the racks. It was one of her favorites.

As the elevator rose, she pulled out her cell and texted Syd.

For a long moment, nothing. And then three dots appeared beside the girl’s name, to show that she was typing.

June watched, restless for an answer.

When it came to Sydney, she’d never been good at waiting.

IV

THREE YEARS AGO

V

CAPITAL CITY

IT had taken an entire year for June to find them again, and when she did, it was entirely by accident. Almost as if it were fate.

The trouble was, June didn’t believe in fate. At least, she didn’t want to believe in it, because fate meant everything happened for a reason, and there were too many things she wished never had. Besides, it was hard to believe in a higher power or a grand design when you killed people for a living.

But then fate—or luck, or whatever it was—went and handed her Sydney.

A year of looking for the man in black, with no luck, and then, fifteen hundred miles from Dresden, where they’d first crossed paths, June cut through a park on the way to a job and saw the blond girl again.

A year—but it was impossibly, undeniably her. She had been—and seemed to still be—at that age where changes happened overnight.

Bodies grew inches, curves—but the girl looked the same. Exactly the same. Same blond bob and ice blue eyes, same narrow build, same giant black dog waiting like a shadow at her side.