Nineteen months earlier...

Owen McCormick was a lucky man.

Clear skies swept the far horizon, where endless blue water stretched, uninterrupted save for the break of waves and the shadowy silhouette of distant fishing vessels, bobbing restlessly out at sea. The sun had just begun to set, casting an orange glow across the water, setting the coastline aflame.

    It really was a beautiful day to die.

    Calla lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the glare of the sunset and followed the spiraling shadows of seagulls all the way to the pier, dodging crushed aluminum cans and discarded burger wrappers, half-buried in the sand. Miami Beach had been crowded with spring breakers all week, much to the delight of her companions. But Calla had not come all this way to drink boozy teas and hard seltzers.

    She'd come here to hunt.

    It was why, earlier that very morning, she'd called in an anonymous tip to the local authorities. The party's out of control, she'd explained hastily, slurring her words and pitching her voice low to avoid detection. There's a kid passed out on the sand. He's not moving. I think he's dead.

    That small white lie had cleared this particular stretch of beach of spring breakers for a very limited window of time—and Calla fully intended to cash in on the opportunity.

    Owen McCormick. She recited the details as she walked, the pier looming overhead. Fifty-nine. Born in Savannah, Georgia. Highschool dropout. Bounced around Atlanta, Greenville, and Raleigh in his early years. Managed to hitch a few rides all the way down the coast, where he's eked out a living ever since.

She scanned the seaside grill lining the boardwalk to her right. Tourists swamped a mural etched into the turquoise plaster. Among the rabble were a handful of townies she recognized. Ruthie, a bouncer who worked the bar across the street. Carl, the grill's bad-tempered chef. Aretha and Erica—waitresses who liked to take a smoke break every hour, on the hour. And...

Her eyes fell to the prone figure sprawled out on the sand beneath the pier, lying dangerously close to the coming tide, a murky brown bottled tucked in the crook of his arm.

"Hello, Owen," she murmured, continuing her leisurely stroll toward the pier and the drunkard dozing there.

Owen McCormick. Local bum. She continued mentally parsing through the details, piecing together the puzzle of an unremarkable man's unremarkable life. Spent twelve months in prison for heroin possession. Another twenty-seven months for peddling cocaine to the locals. A bead of sweat arced its way along the curve of her back as she stepped into the shadow of the pier, a balm against her overheated skin. Served another three months on a homicide charge. Released on a technicality.

"I wonder," she mused aloud, pausing to gaze down at Owen's prone form, "if anyone will even know when you're gone."

Unlikely.

She unclasped the belt she'd donned before leaving the condo she and her friends had rented for the week. Owen reeked of stale beer and seaweed. Or that could just be the actual seaweed. She considered the green globs to her left, congealed in clumps of frothy sea foam.

"Wake up," she ordered, nudging Owen's thigh with her bare foot. When he didn't budge, she heaved a sigh. "I don't have time for this," she muttered. Her friends had been passed out in booze-induced slumbers when she'd last left them, but they would wake soon, and her absence would be noted, especially by Olivia. She could always lie, of course. Claim she'd spent the last hour with some muscled stranger she'd ran into on the beach. With this many degenerates running around, no one would wonder why she'd never bothered to catch the guy's name before, during, or after the fact.

Still. Time was short. As was her patience.

Calla crouched low and tapped Owen on the cheek. "Rise and shine, McCormick. One last sunset to close out your miserable life, eh?"

A heap of bones and sinew. That was all that was left of him. He groaned as he stirred, rheumy eyes blinking up at her. "Who're you?" he slurred.

"No one," she said, offering him a kind smile.

She wrapped the belt around his neck and pulled.

He sputtered as she dragged him over to the shoreline, disoriented from the drugs and the alcohol coursing through his system. Too late to get clean now, she thought, hissing as the icy water kissed her feet. Just a little further. Work with me here, McCormick.

He fought her. But his struggles were weak. Half-hearted. As if he'd seen how this particular movie played out and had no interest in prolonging the inevitable. Calla wondered how long he'd been waiting for death. If a part of him welcomed this.

It wasn't until she'd shoved him face-first into the rolling waves that his survival instincts kicked in, meager though they were. She braced her knee against the small of his back and held him under, her hand fisted in what little remained of his scraggly gray hair. The belt had been for leverage, but it would be the sea he'd so loved that would see him to his end.

A watery grave.

She grimaced as he flailed, spraying saltwater in her face, irritating her eyes. "It's living that's hard," she panted, pushing him down, down, down. "Let go, old man. Just let go."

He jerked beneath her. Once. Twice. And then it was over.

Calla pushed herself upright, her belt swinging from one hand. Exhausted, she looped the faux leather back through her denim shorts, fumbling with the buckle.

It's done. Exhaling, she pulled out the burner phone she'd purchased at the nearest convenience store—for this very purpose—and snapped a picture of Owen McCormick's waterlogged body. It's finally done.

She sent off the evidence of her crime and watched as the body slowly drifted out to sea. He would be spotted soon. Or maybe a shark would come and snag him before he reached the pier's edge.

One could hope.

She rubbed her hands, tacky with saltwater, against her shorts and plodded back onto the shore. She had no idea who'd sent her on this fool's errand, or why they'd wanted Owen McCormick dead. But the job was done. It was over. Or so she thought.

It would be several weeks before she realized how very wrong she'd been.

#     #     #

"People say that drowning is a pretty peaceful way to go." Calla snorted as she reached for the pot of coffee she'd put on earlier. "I don't know about all that. Owen seemed like he suffered plenty."

    Cooper had followed her into the kitchen, a silent shadow, ever-watchful as she regaled him with her tale of murder most foul. Calla almost laughed at the nauseous twist to his lips—laughed, because the alternative would be to scream.

    She'd warned him. She'd warned him that this was a bad idea. But Cooper—stubborn, foolish, never-thinks-things-through Cooper—

Tell me. Tell me how you killed them.

    Calla refilled her coffee mug and drank, savoring the heat as it scalded the back of her throat. She would regret that later—it was really much too hot to drink—but she could always pop a few pills down her throat if the pain got too bad.

    "He killed a little boy." Cooper stared down at the police report he'd found in the rubble while she'd spun her tale. Calla already knew the details by heart.

Owen McCormick. Fifty-nine...

Except he'd only been twenty-two back when he killed that boy during a brief stint in Raleigh. According to the report, Michaels had worked the case and almost earned a conviction, until some sloppy officer mishandled evidence and got the whole thing thrown out. Another mistrial. Another mistake.

Another name on her list.

    Cooper shoved aside the report. "Owen McCormick was a murderer."

    Calla smiled ruefully down at her coffee. "He deserved what he got." When she looked at him, she was pleased to see he'd gone red with embarrassment. "That's what you're trying to say. He was a killer, and killers deserve whatever end they get dealt."

    "No. Yes. No." He curled his fingers through his shaggy hair. Calla felt the strangest urge to reach out and touch it. Maybe she'd rip it right out of his scalp. Or maybe she wouldn't. "I don't know," he said, echoing her thoughts.

    "Fair enough." The coffee had gone sour between her teeth. "It doesn't get easier, you know. You're never going to wake up one day and be okay with this." She gestured at the paperwork on the counter. "It's not in your nature."

    "But it's in yours." He frowned down at the report. Looked at her. "You haven't lost a wink of sleep over any of this. Have you?"

    The accusation didn't faze her. "Oh, I've lost more than a wink. I lie awake at night, same as you. I imagine what it would be like to start over. To be done with the blackmail and everything that happened...before." She held his stare, unflinching. "But if you're implying that I don't toss and turn over the lives I've taken, you'd be correct. Owen McCormick meant nothing to me. Tracy Smith meant nothing to me. I am what I am. There's no changing that."

    Anger flared to life in her chest when he ripped his gaze from hers. "I know."

    "No." She turned to the sink in disappointment. "I don't think you do."

    "Then make me understand." The desperation in his words fed the flames of her rising temper. "Tell me about the others."

    Calla turned on the faucet. Let the icy water numb her fingers. "No."

    His voice hardened. "Tell me."

    "Fine." She shut off the water and turned to face him. "Kurt Rivera. He was the second. Should we talk about him? Should we talk about how I lured him across the country on false pretenses?"

Cooper held her angry stare, a flash of color staining his cheeks. "Yes."

Wrong answer.

"Kurt Rivera. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Forty-two. Environmentalist nut. Lived in Los Angeles with his mother." She pushed away from the sink. "It wasn't hard, convincing him to fly out to meet me. All it took was one fake dating profile and a few suggestive DMs..."

She'd been careful about it, of course, linking the account to a burner email—had gone so far as accessing the site exclusively from the servers at the campus library, where her activity couldn't be traced with any accuracy. She sneered at the thought of those long nights spent at the library, pouring over her notes with careful attention, one eye on her textbook and the other on the private messages she'd exchanged with Kurt.

Simple, lonely Kurt.

Cooper watched her as carefully as she watched him when she said, "He got attached. Told me about his miserable life and his miserable mother and his miserable job. He kept asking to see me, offering to fly me out and other such nonsense." She rolled her eyes. "I convinced him to come to me instead."

And he had, simpleton that he was. We can hike to the Falls together, he'd told her in his last message—meaning, of course, Ithaca Falls, the town's local attraction. Calla had never understood the appeal of exerting herself just so she could stare at an oversized hunk of wet rock, but she knew a man like Kurt, who enjoyed the outdoors more than anything else in his life, would leap at the chance to treat her to a romantic hike.

"The idiot never heard me coming. All it took was one little push." She made a shoving motion with her hands, and Cooper flinched. "He screamed as he fell. Right up until his skull split against the rocks below." A short, derisive laugh. "The whole thing reminded me of Cory, now that I think about it. Just a little bit."

Cooper looked ill at that particular reminder. But she wouldn't be stopped, not now that he'd gotten her riled up. You wanted to hear the truth of it, Cooper, she thought. Well. Here it is.

"Or maybe," she said slowly, "we should talk about Jeremy Kepner. The man I buried the day you decided to show up here, unannounced."

She circled the counter that separated them, drawing closer to where Cooper stood frozen with each careful, measured step. "Now there was a tricky target. Jeremy is..." She smiled ruefully. "Jeremy was a hotshot defense attorney from Syracuse. Syracuse," she repeated, bemused. "Mike's playing ball there, isn't he?" She waved a hand when Cooper opened his mouth. "Don't answer that. I know he is. That's one reason why the twins were on my shit list for this..."

"Calla." He spoke her name quietly.

"Don't interrupt," she snapped. And then she smiled again. Sugar-sweet. "Like I was saying. Jeremy was an important man. It's not like I could break into his home, guns a-blazing. That sort of news makes headlines."

That's why he was such a pain in my ass, she didn't say. But the thought was there, and her smile soured as she thought again of the endless hours she'd spent scouring the media for information about his unsavory clientele, and more hours still attempting to learn his habits, his interests, his triumphs—and his hardships.

In the end, it had been the nature of his work that had given Calla the opening she'd needed to see Jeremy Kepner into an early grave. She allowed herself a moment—and only a moment—to remember how it had felt to intercept him in the parking lot of his favorite dive bar; how it had felt to knock him unconscious with the very same shovel she'd used only hours later to dig his grave.

He'd been heavier than she'd imagined he'd be. Dragging him into the van—that had been difficult. But killing him the way she had, with one quick, sharp twist of his neck...

That had been easy. Too easy, almost.

"Lucky for me," she continued after a brief pause, "Jeremy offered his services to a lot of dangerous people. I just had to wait for him to screw up. And he did, eventually."

She took another step forward, drumming her fingers against the cool marble countertop as she eliminated the space between her and Cooper. He tracked her approach, wary. And utterly silent. "His fumble in court cost the son of a fairly temperamental druglord ten years in prison. Ten years. The guy had to be pissed. After such an egregious error, if Jeremy went missing...well." She shrugged, flippant. "That's what Jeremy Kepner deserved, I suppose."

"Calla—"

She stopped just shy of where he stood, close enough to touch. "I think," she said carefully, reigning in her anger, "that's all for today's history lesson. You can leave whenever you'd like." She flicked her fingers over her shoulder. "The door's over—"

Cooper surprised her by taking hold of her wrist. His skin felt unbearably warm against her own. "Seriously? It's going to take more than that to scare me off."

Her jaw worked as she fought the urge to twist free of him. "You seemed plenty scared before," she finally managed, the words whisper-thin and damnably uncertain.

She'd come to rely on him, she realized with no small amount of horror. His unflappable humor. His steadfast nature. Qualities she'd often mocked, if only because she couldn't quite understand it. Couldn't quite understand him. Even after all this time.

"Forgive me if I need more than five seconds to...digest," he said carefully, dancing around her temper.

"Brave words." Moving slowly, like a fox circling a hare, she twisted her wrist from his grasp. "You know what I think?"

His throat bobbed. "What?"

So calm. So patient. Scowling, she brushed her knuckles along the curve of his jaw, hoping to catch him by surprise. He held perfectly still, stubbornly refusing to rise to her bait.

"I think," she murmured, "you're turning into a very good liar."

At that, his facade cracked. "I'm not sure that's such a good thing."

Calla's hand dropped. "Maybe not." She left him in the kitchen, staring forlornly at the wall. "Get over here. Our work's not finished."

    After a beat, he sighed and joined her on the couch. "We already know how this plays out." He gestured to the explosion of paperwork surrounding them. "Harlan Burke and Kurt Rivera and Jeremy Kepner will be in here somewhere, probably for a murder charge they got to walk away from, thanks to our shitty justice system. You were right. The detective's the missing link."

    "Let's confirm that theory, then." Calla grabbed a fresh stack of papers from the pile on the coffee table and held it out for him to take. "No more near-misses."

    "Fine." Cooper graciously accepted the new documents. "No more near-misses."

    "That's the spirit." Her focus drifted to the papers scattered on the cushion between them. Margaret Yate's file stared back at her like an accusation.

Unfinished. Unresolved.

Calla imagined Margaret Yate whispering those words from whatever earthen grave she'd found herself tethered to. Some twenty odd years ago, Lenny Li had killed her. Calla didn't know why, or even how. Maybe Margaret had deserved it. Maybe Margaret had the worst laugh in the world and suffered from a superiority complex and needed to be put in her place.

Not that any of it mattered, because Margaret was dead dead dead.

And soon, Lenny will be dead too.

    "Cooper?" He looked at her wordlessly, a question in his eyes. "You said you're all in. How all in are we talking?"

    He stared at her for what felt like an unnecessarily long time. "I'm going to regret this," he said at last, eyes narrowing.

    "Probably." She leaned forward. "I need you to do something for me."