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CORDES-SUR-CIEL, FRANCE

“I can’t do this, not again,” Alison tells her father.

“I spoke to Ken and he’s concerned they’re onto us.”

“How many times do we have to…”

She places her breakfast plate in the sink harder than she should. It’s not her father’s fault, she knows, it’s her own fault. She got them into this mess. Whoever says the things you do when you’re only fourteen can’t haunt you forever is dead wrong. Ask Taylor Harper. Ask Alison Lane. Now ask her third identity in nine years: Sophia Rosseau. Strangely, she always thinks of herself as Alison, maybe because that was the happiest time of her life.

“I don’t think you should go to the gallery today.”

Alison shakes her head. “I’m not going to live in fear. I have a life. And I have a new client coming in today. He might take the entire collection of one of my artists. The sale could change her life.”

Her father’s face is etched with worry. He just wants the best for her, she knows. But she can’t—she won’t—start over again. How many times can one person, in one life…?

She smooths her skirt. Sighs. “If I see anything suspicious, I’ll go to our place.” They have a preplanned meeting spot, the dilapidated farmhouse outside the fortified gates of the town. Her father is a planner, a moneyman, and has new papers and an escape bag with cash, passports, and everything one needs to start a new life. He’s had enough practice, for goodness’ sake.

She kisses him on the cheek, grabs her satchel, and heads to the door.

“You’re riding your bike?” he asks.

“I was planning to.”

“Good. Don’t drive the Volkswagen. It’s been acting up. I think the engine is going out, so take the other car if you need to drive anywhere. Seriously, it could be dangerous to drive, so…”

“Got it,” she says, then heads out. He was in the garage tinkering with the VW all night. He should get a mechanic, but that’s not his way.

She rides along the bumpy cobblestones, lost in her head. She’s been trying not to think about it, trying not to let anxiety creep in, but she couldn’t resist googling. They found the car. She wonders if they found the note too. The stories say they found her “personal effects,” but that could be her handbag, the rucksack. There’s no way anything survived submerged for so long. And if they find it, only one person would understand the note. It was foolish writing that note. A schoolgirl’s fantasy of reuniting romantically in Cordes-sur-Ciel if the O’Learys showed up in Leavenworth as her father feared when that video went viral. She didn’t understand the danger until she saw what her father did to those men who’d come to take her. Until he told her what they would do to her—to Ryan—if they found them again. So she had to let Ryan go.

She thinks about Ryan. Regret and guilt flow into her bloodstream as if by IV. He didn’t deserve any of this. He not only lost her, he lost his life. To suspicion. She begged her father to do something about that. That’s when Uncle Ken planted the evidence about the Missouri River Killer. But even that is falling apart. She’s monitored true crime blogs and podcasts, which are buzzing about the discovery of two dead men in the car at the bottom of Suncatcher Lake, questioning whether MRK was really involved.

How is Ryan? Where has life taken him? She’s internet-snooped from time to time, but after he quit playing ball he fell off the grid. Maybe someday she’ll be able to tell him she’s sorry. But what would she say?

She approaches her favorite hill. The one that overlooks the beautiful town. When she races down this slope all of her problems, her regrets, her fears, drift away, if only for a few seconds each day.

She careens around the few cars on the roadway and races in the wind. Her thoughts venture to the rainy night with Ryan, the wind and rain and electricity in the air. She wonders what he’d think of her now. Would he forgive her? Would he be proud of her? Would he still love her?

Her thoughts are interrupted by the feeling of being watched.

Of being followed.