The faces on that wall seemed to pour their anguish into the room.

Fear.

Despair.

Rage.

I knew what they had suffered.

I had lived it.

Tears ran down my face.

I was back on the operating table, feeling them take my heart.

Or perhaps I had never truly left it.

Death hadn’t freed me for a single moment.

“Sir.”

Miles watched Lucian carefully and wet his dry lips.

“Her photograph is different from the others. Maybe she’s still alive.”

It was a painfully weak argument.

I smiled bitterly.

A wall of dead people.

Why would I be the exception?

I had disappeared before Tessa.

Lucian was far too intelligent to believe it.

I turned to him.

What did he feel, seeing my picture there?

Would there be a little sadness?

He had just set off fireworks for my birthday.

Perhaps, beyond enemy and prey, there was some measure of understanding between us.

I searched his face.

Nothing.

His jaw was tight. His eyes remained fixed on my photograph.

Then he walked over and took down my picture and file.

Knox arrived with Owen.

“He says he has important information. He wants to tell you himself.”

Knox was well over six feet tall, with the solid muscle of someone who had actually fought on battlefields. His arms looked thicker than Owen’s thighs.

He caught him by the collar and threw him into the room.

Owen swallowed.

He tried to look composed, but his eyes betrayed him.

“Mr. Blackwood, I’m willing to forget that you tricked me. I have another important lead. I can give it to you. But there’s one condition.”

His voice faltered.

“You need to arrange safe passage out of the country first.”

He was lying.

I had hoped Owen might lead us straight to Julian.

Now I saw how unlikely that was.

He needed an intermediary just to call K. He was a disposable nobody.

What valuable information could he have?

He had exposed K. The people behind him wouldn’t forgive that.

He wanted protection.

Lucian was probably the only person who could keep him alive.

If I could see through it, Lucian certainly could.

He never looked up at Owen.

He carefully folded my photograph and file and placed them inside his breast pocket.

He had been silent throughout.

But something around him grew darker.

More violent.

Then he picked up a chair and swung it into Owen.

The wood shattered.

It happened too quickly for Owen to dodge.

He fell, screaming.

Lucian picked up a broken chair leg and brought it down on his legs.

Again.

Again.

His face held no expression.

He released the violence with a terrible, steady calm.

I stood frozen, my spirit shaking.

I had never seen this side of him.

Pure brutality.

Nothing else showing through.

Even questioning Voss, he hadn’t been like this.

His eyes were cold and bloodshot. Endless killing intent seemed to have found a crack in the wall holding it back.

Owen had stepped directly into its path.

Nobody intervened.

Nobody spoke.

At last, Owen lost consciousness.

Lucian had broken two pieces of wood against him.

He stopped.

A sharp edge had cut his palm.

Blood ran along the lines of his hand and dripped from his fingertips.

Red drops broke against the floor.

I thought, strangely, of the fireworks by the river.

Lucian tipped back his head and closed his eyes.

Amid all that blood, his beautiful face looked almost unearthly.

And he seemed to be in pain.

Slowly, I moved toward him.

I hadn’t imagined it.

A thin line of moisture slipped from the corner of his closed eye.

It vanished into his hair.

Silently.

Nobody saw it but me.

I covered my chest.

How strange.

I was dead.

Why did it suddenly feel as though something sharp had gone through my heart?

His phone rang.

Felix.

“Hayes is heading your way with a lot of officers. You should leave. He’s stubborn, and he already dislikes you. Running into him there will be trouble.”

Lucian had hidden every trace of emotion again.

He walked out, stepping directly on Owen’s hand.

I heard the bones break.

“Serves him right.”

A woman’s voice sounded behind me, thick with hatred.

Tessa.

She had appeared out of nowhere.

She stared at Owen. If she could have touched him, she would have killed him herself.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

The tether was already drawing me after Lucian.

Fortunately, she followed.

“I don’t know. I was at the hospital with my mom. Everything went dark for a second. When I could see again, I was here.”

She looked fiercely satisfied.

“At least I got to see him beaten. That helps.”

Apparently, death didn’t work the same way for everyone.

She looked at Lucian with shining gratitude.

“He’s such a good man. And so handsome. In my next life, I’m going to live well and repay him.”

I stared at her.

I had never expected to hear “good man” used about Lucian.

But from her perspective, it was fair.

He had given her a measure of revenge.

“Tessa. Do you know who received your organs?”

She shook her head.

Her smile turned bitter.

“I didn’t know anything. Then I was dead.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Twenty years without parents. I finally found them. All I wanted was to earn enough to take care of them when they got old.”

Even that simple wish had been denied her.

Outside the building, residents were out for evening walks.

A young woman passed through Tessa, linking arms with her parents and laughing.

Tessa stopped.

She watched them go with naked longing.

I watched her with the same feeling.

At least she had spent six happy months with her mother and father.

I hadn’t had even that.

Only after dying had I found my mother. And because of me, people were still hurting her.

Guilt and pain filled me.

I followed Lucian into the car.

Tessa came, too.

She looked around the interior curiously, trying to touch things even though she knew she couldn’t.

“I never got to ride in a car like this when I was alive.”

There was regret in her voice.

More than that, wonder.

Then she shrugged and smiled.

“Oh, well. I could work my whole life and never afford one.”

I looked at her quietly.

She was the first person like me I had met since dying.

Then I noticed something.

Her spirit was fainter than before.

As though she were beginning to disappear.