Page 120 of Villains Series

THREE YEARS AGO

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.

June scanned the park—there was no sign of the man in black, but she glimpsed the other one sitting in the grass, tattoos wrapped around his forearms and a book open on his knee. She saw a flash of pink nearby, a forgotten Frisbee. She picked it up, spun it between her fingers, and then lobbed the plastic disc at the man’s head.

It connected with a light crack, and June jogged up to him, a bouncy young brunette, all apologies and sunshine.

“It’s all right,”

he said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Takes more than a Frisbee to knock me over.”

He offered it back, and when her fingers brushed his, his life flickered through her like a film reel. He was so open, so human. Mitch Turner. Forty-three. Foster homes and skinned knees and bloody knuckles in a street brawl. Computer screens and car tires screeching. Handcuffs and a prison cell and a cafeteria, a man with a makeshift knife, a muffled threat, and then—June saw a face she recognized.

And thanks to Mitch, she now had a name to go with it.

Victor Vale.

In Mitch’s mind, the man was lean but not yet gaunt, washed out in prison grays instead of fitted blacks. A flick of his wrist, and another man who threatened collapsed with a scream.

That meeting, like a hinge in Mitch’s mind—beyond that moment, his memories were all marked by Victor’s blue eyes, his pale hair. Until they found her. Sydney, bloody and rain-soaked in a too-big coat. Sydney, who wasn’t human. Sydney, who Mitch didn’t know what to do with, how to handle. Sydney, and now a different kind of fear.

Loss.

And tucked into all of that, like a slip of paper in a book, a last memory. Another blond girl. A body buried by fire. A choice smothered by regret.

“Sorry,”

June heard herself say again, even as the man’s memories flashed through her head.

“My aim is just awful.”

“Don’t worry about it,”

said Mitch, radiating kindness, warmth.

He sat back in the grass with his book and smiled. June smiled back and said good-bye, her focus already turning to the girl under the tree.

Unknown Number: I forgot to tell you.

Unknown Number: My name is Sydney.

June cradled the cell phone in her palm. She already knew the girl’s name, of course, but it was better, coming from her. June wanted things to happen naturally, even if they hadn’t started that way.

Nice to meet you, Sydney, she wrote back. I’m June.

Good, she thought with a smile.

Now they could be proper friends.