The Maybach tore through the city, running several red lights.

It seemed to skim the road. Buildings blurred beyond the windows.

Once I adjusted to the speed, being dead gave me a little courage.

I rested my chin in my hand and studied Lucian.

Would I find any sadness there?

We had known each other for years. If I really was dead, would he care at all?

His face remained expressionless.

He stared ahead, those gray-blue eyes as impenetrable as a deep-sea current.

I leaned back and considered something more useful.

Finding my body would be good.

It would bring the police one step closer to my murderer.

I looked at my hands.

Flora had given me two chances left to touch the physical world.

Used correctly, perhaps they could help the police identify Julian.

I smiled toward the wide sky ahead.

For once, justice felt possible again.

Near our destination, Adrian called back.

“The police are there. They’re examining the body. You might want to stay away. If it is Stella, your presence could look suspicious. Given your relationship…”

“What relationship?” Lucian interrupted.

His voice was level.

Cold threaded through it.

Adrian hesitated.

“Well. Bitter enemies. You couldn’t stand each other. Every time you met—”

“Shut up.”

Lucian ended the call.

I looked at his silent profile.

Adrian wasn’t merely an employee. His family had served the Blackwoods for generations, and the two men had known each other since childhood.

Apparently, everyone close to Lucian knew how much he hated me.

We reached Mistwood Ridge, north of Fairhaven.

The terrain was steep and thickly wooded. People rarely came here.

Today, police tape marked off the foot of the ridge. More than a dozen officers were examining the scene.

Among them, I recognized Hayes.

Hope surged through me.

He had been investigating my disappearance. With my body found, perhaps he could solve it quickly.

When he took the remains away, I could follow him to the station.

Watch the investigation.

Find a chance to point him toward Julian.

Lucian got out and headed straight for the scene.

An officer stopped him at the tape.

“This is an active investigation. You can’t come in.”

“Move.”

Something vicious slipped through Lucian’s cold expression.

The young officer didn’t recognize him, but he stepped back before he could help it.

By the time he recovered, Lucian had pulled aside the tape and gone through.

“Hey! Stop—”

“Carter!” Hayes called.

The officer straightened automatically.

“Detective, this man—”

“It’s fine. Get back to work.”

Hayes glanced beyond Lucian.

More than a dozen black cars were stopping several yards outside the cordon. Miles got out with a line of disciplined bodyguards.

Hayes looked as though he could already feel the headache coming.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Blackwood?”

“Where’s Stella’s body?”

Hayes frowned.

“Who told you the woman we found was Stella?”

Lucian had no patience for explanations.

He strode toward the body.

I followed, my excitement already gone.

It wasn’t me.

As soon as we arrived, I had tried to go straight to the remains.

I couldn’t.

I was still tethered to Lucian.

If that had been my body, I would have been able to reach it.

All that hope, only to have it extinguished.

Then I saw her.

I froze.

No wonder Adrian had thought she might be me.

Her build was similar. Something heavy had crushed her head, leaving it unrecognizable.

Exactly what Voss had described.

Worse, her abdomen had been opened.

Every organ was gone.

I didn’t know who she was.

But the terrible resemblance to my own death filled me with grief.

I began to cry.

Two officers had gone aside to vomit.

Lucian asked the medical examiner for gloves.

At Hayes’s silent permission, the examiner handed him a pair.

He crouched beside the body and examined it carefully, without the slightest change in expression.

Even I found it difficult to watch.

Gradually, his eyes steadied.

The violence in his presence receded.

He stood, removed the gloves, and said, “It isn’t Stella.”

Quiet.

Certain.

How could he know simply by looking?

The body was mutilated beyond recognition and shaped so much like mine.

Unless he knew every part of my body.

Which was obviously impossible.

Hayes was about to speak when the young officer hurried back.

“The family’s here.”

I turned.

A middle-aged couple approached, holding each other up.

The woman’s eyes were swollen and red. Tears streaked her pale, exhausted face.

Her husband wore no expression. His dry lips were pressed together so tightly they had begun to bleed. His hair was almost completely white.

I looked away.

Hayes approached them solemnly.

“We compared hair from the remains with the samples you provided from your missing daughter. The results just came back. We can confirm that she is Tessa Morgan.”

The mother cried out.

Without her husband, she would have fallen.

“My poor girl.” She struck her own chest, sobbing. “She disappeared when she was three. We searched for twenty years. We finally got her back less than six months ago. What kind of monster did this?”

Missing at three.

Had she grown up as an orphan, too?

I looked back at the body.

An awful possibility formed in my mind.

Cold spread through me.