"Tillie?"

Ciar's whisper broke me. In it, I heard everything that had been hers. His heart, his soul, his past. His present.

No. It's not her. It couldn't be. She was dead. And yet, in the haggard angle of her jaw and the haunted circles under her eyes, I recognized her just as easily as Ciar did. Wrapped in a black hoodie, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, she stared at us not like someone reuniting with loved ones, but like a spirit reclaiming something stolen.

And in a way, it was true. She stared at me with cold, emotionless eyes, and I wondered if she knew what Ciar and I had done, what Donovan and I had done. The life I had taken over from her.

"Let's go," she rasped. "Get in the car and don't make a big deal out of it."

"But how—?"

Ciar's question died abruptly as she pulled her hand just far enough from her pocket to flash a tiny handgun. My mouth fell open, and I stumbled backward.

She followed like a predator cornering its next meal. This was not the Tilda I remembered. Yet she still held her shoulders high and moved with a grace that I remembered from our high school prom, when she'd captivated both of our dates with her silky red dress.

It happened all over again as Ciar's eyes followed us—followed her—until we all reached the car. Reaching around me, she yanked the rear door open and shoved me in the back, climbing in beside me.

The gun was out now, held low enough that it couldn't be seen from outside. "Get in," she growled at Ciar.

He obeyed, his eyes never leaving us. They briefly met mine in the rearview mirror, but just as quickly flicked away.

"What do you want, Tillie?"

She glared at the back of his head. "Drive."

"Where?"

"Just take a left out of the lot and keep your hands where I can see them on the wheel."

"Okay." He held up his hands in surrender, then slowly turned the key and started to back out of the space. "Why don't you point that thing somewhere else?"

Tilda glanced at the gun, then let out a long, slow laugh. She leaned forward, resting her chin on the back of his seat, and bit back a smile. "At you?" She ran a hand through his hair, the other still keeping me in the gun's sights. "It's been years, but I still know you, Ciar. You wouldn't give two shits if I shot you."

His nostrils flared, his lips twitching. "Things change."

She finally leaned back, giving one final, almost playful tug on his hair. With a grimace, he swiped at her hand as it fell away.

"Some things," she said.

Ciar stopped at the lot's exit, the click of the blinker far too loud in the closed space. I clenched my fists in my lap as we bumped back onto the road. I hated the powerlessness, but what could I do? Dive for the gun? I didn't want to believe that my sister would shoot me, but that look in her eyes as she'd grabbed me outside the diner haunted me. She wouldn't hesitate.

"Give me your phone."

I looked up to find her staring at me. I froze, the gun drawing my eyes like a magnet.

"Your phone!" she repeated.

Before I could reach for my pocket, Ciar interrupted. "We're on the run, Tillie. We dumped them."

Her lip curled into half a smirk. "No, you didn't," she said quietly. "How do you think I found you?"

My stomach sank. Why hadn't we dumped the phones? That had to be the first thing the police would try to track, and if Tilda had already done it, they couldn't be far behind.

Her fingers tightened around the gun, a tiny movement, just enough to remind me it was still there. I hastily pulled my phone out of my pocket and threw it at her.

She flipped it over in her free hand, staring at the screen. The face ID unlocked—we were identical twins, after all—but she only held down two of the buttons until the phone shut off.

"No one picks up anymore, do they?" she asked.

My breath caught in my throat. "How did you know that?"

"He did the same thing to me." She traced her finger along the screen absently, and her smile turned hard, curdling as memories tugged at its corners. "He's so clever."

I leaned closer, taking care to move slowly so she wouldn't pull the trigger. "Who?"

"Turn right at the next light," she shot over the front seat at Ciar. Then she held up my phone. "It happened to me, too. You texted, didn't you?"

I nodded, remembering all the unanswered messages that had led up to my night on the Golden Gate Bridge.

"I never got them." She dropped the phone into her lap. "I texted you, too."

I shook my head, but she cut me off.

"Yes. I asked why you were ignoring me. I cursed you out to your face. Or I thought I did."

I thought of myself, just yesterday, sitting in my car in Ciar's parking lot and swearing up and down at Mark. "What do you mean? How are you alive? Why are you doing this?"

Like a flood, the questions wouldn't stop. She stared at me for a few seconds, then latched onto the last one.

"I'm doing this for you."

I pointed at myself. "Me?"

She nodded. "And the baby."

My spine straightened. The baby. Her baby? She'd jumped while pregnant. Did that mean...?

"Left," she barked before I could ask. Ciar's last-minute turn threw me back against the door, leaving me grappling at the back of the seat in front of me as Tilda returned her focus to him and the road ahead. "And another...and then right at the stop sign. Stop. Pull in here."

The tires hit gravel, and as Ciar pulled to a stop, a dilapidated shed came into view, nestled far back in the surrounding evergreens. I glanced out the rear window; the road was barely visible, and even if anyone had driven by, we were so well-hidden that they'd never see us.

"Come on." Tilda tugged me out of the back, and I stumbled a few steps before Ciar caught me. With the gun still aimed at us, we trudged toward the shack.

The inside made my shoebox apartment in San Francisco look luxurious. It was barely large enough for the three of us to fit comfortably, the wooden floor rough with splinters and the windows tiny and high on the cracked walls. I saw no hint of electricity or running water; the makeshift bed in the corner was merely two blankets, one spread out on the floor and one rolled up like a pillow.

Tilda bent down to scoop something up off the floor, tossing it at Ciar. As he caught it, I recognized a pair of handcuffs.

"You know what to do." She pointed at a rusty radiator jutting out from the wall.

I couldn't tell from his face if he was offended or just didn't like the idea of cutting off his escape. "Why?"

"Because I'm not here for you and you'll just get in the way."

He flinched, his hands tightening on the cuffs. She said it so bluntly, like he'd never meant anything to her. Like he was a mistake she wanted to leave behind.

"Tilda, stop," I pleaded.

Her expression remained stony, never looking away from Ciar. "Just do it." She wiggled the gun, still aiming at me.

"On one condition."

"I really don't think you're in a position to be making demands, Ciar."

His eyes followed her as she took a step closer to me, but he didn't move a muscle. "Tell us everything."

For a long moment, no one spoke. The lack of ventilation left the stillness even more stifling as mold and must gathered in my nostrils.

"Okay," Tilda finally said. "I'll bite. We have time to kill anyway."

She sat down on the blanket and patted the space next to her, obviously meaning for me to sit down. Ciar slowly folded himself into place beside the radiator on the opposite side of the room, and I backed toward him. The telltale clank of the cuffs cut the silence as he clipped one end to the radiator and the other around his left wrist.

I sat down beside him, my back against the wall. Tilda's mouth twitched, as if even the small, understandable rejection cut into her. For a second guilt squeezed my heart; I knew that feeling too well.

"All right," she drawled, studying her gun as casually as if it were a simple trinket. "Ask away."

"How are you alive?" Ciar said at once.

Tilda opened her mouth, an inhale sharp on her tongue as she prepared her story.

"No," I broke in, my heart accelerating as I realized that she was the answer to everything. The mysterious flash of blond I kept seeing, the photo of me in a black hoodie I'd never owned, the woman on the Tobin Bridge who'd dumped Nero's body.

It was her.

I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around my knees, staring into a face I thought I would only ever see in the mirror.

"The women. The other five, the ones you sent to my printer. Who are they?"