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The girl outside groaned then screamed in climax, for the third time. I blinked away the monster. Mechanically, I touched the photos, the knife, the capsules, then I mouthed the words. I only read a few of them nowadays, and it was enough.

“It was a bright day in Cuba when I first saw Wolfe and I first saw Red...”

This was my shrine to the day Isak Bain went bad but stayed a little good.

The girl was sobbing and I matched the rhythm of my words to her sounds.

When I finished and stood, she lay curled on the stone. Vitor was taking down the ropes. Her breathing was still rapid, she was mottled and striped with red, but she was fine. I clicked my tongue.

“Vitor, take her downstairs. She’ll get sunburned there.”

Chapter 2

I flew in, went through customs, and hired a local taxi within an hour of landing. With my innocuous luggage in the trunk, I was on my way to where he lived. I knew his name, couldn’t think it without fearing retribution. I couldn’t think it without feeling ill.

As we drove down from the hills surrounding the town, it unfolded like some perfect, pop-up children’s book. Small and peaceful, on the surface. The vast and sparkling blueness of the sea overwhelmed me more than the cuteness of the houses.

If this was the last thing I saw before I died, at least it was pretty. Such dark musings.

A dull gnawing in my stomach reminded me of the stupidity of my plans.

I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, smearing lipstick. I rubbed off the marks on my skin with a tissue until all of it was gone. Cleanliness was close to innocence.

Could you become innocent after being dragged through the dirt? Not that he’d done much to me physically – it was having someone inside my head that bothered me. It’d left a stain, a dirty, stinking, life-wrecking stain.

Most of this trip was arranged and planned. Being downgraded to an analyst hadn’t deprived me of the ability to get things done. I’d manipulated the system and would get fired and arrested if I returned. When.

Who gave a fuck? Except it limited my free time here. The agency would catch up with me soon.

Years of agonizin

g lay in my wake.

I had the names of illegal gun dealers but hadn’t been able to arrange a weapon, and I couldn’t kill him up close.

Those years...

No lovers. No orgasms. No intimacy. Crying myself to sleep because I could tell no one what had caused my so-called breakdown in Cuba.

That first time I encountered a mesmer in the US...

Luckily, he’d died before he could do anything except brush across my mind, adding another microscopic layer of grime to what the other man had left. I took it as a warning and hired protection for when I wasn’t at work – briefed my bodyguard on possible actions if I did anything odd. I took other precautions, as a suspicious, over-paranoid agent might do.

Then...nothing.

No one came near me and no one obstructed my search for him. A fingerprint on my handbag was my treasured clue and I’d used it to find him – Isak Bain.

After three years of looking, the database had coughed up a match. A routine police investigation in a South American country, to rule out the innocent, had been picked up by NSA scans. His print was one of those tested and discarded, because he was innocent. As if he could ever be.

The taxi thumped over potholes, rattling my luggage.

I inhaled and let my hands rest in my lap. All I had to do was get a long gun, stay distant, and kill him before he realized I was here. The CIA had taught me to shoot and I’d enhanced my combat skills over the three years since, anticipating this day.

If he closed in, if I was brought within range of his freaky mind control, I would fail.

The longer I took, the more likely he or the CIA would find me. I’d been bad.

I stepped out of the cab into the shadow of a roof outside Reception. My apartment in this up-and-down, dilapidated little resort was elevated and on the fourth floor.