The glass double doors swished back automatically as Kane approached them to enter the medical center on Cappa Level. He was dressed in his Mag street clothes—dark T-shirt and pants, Kevlar coat and dark glasses—and he felt the eyes of the people in the facility turn to him warily as he walked straight up to the main reception desk past the waiting patients.
“C-can I help you, M-magistrate?” the desk clerk stuttered, afraid to meet Kane’s hidden gaze. The clerk was a young man, barely out of his teens, with a few spots of acne dotting his rosy cheeks.
“I’m here to see a friend of mine,” Kane told the clerk. “A Magistrate by the name of Grant.”
“I’ll just look…” the clerk began, knocking papers from his desk in his haste to reach the computer indexing system that sat across from his desk. He spoke several commands into the computer mike, was forced to repeat one because his voice was trembling so, until he retrieved the information. He grabbed a sheet of notepaper and scribbled down the information from his screen before turning back to Kane. “He’s in room 7D17. That’s on the seventh floor,” the clerk explained, handing the scrap of paper to Kane. “I wrote it down for you.”
Kane took the paper and glanced at it as he made his way across the buffed floor to the bank of elevators. The note was written so poorly as to be almost illegible, the clerk’s hand had been shaking so much. Maybe Kane should come back sometime soon and find out what it was this young punk was so afraid of, what it was he was hiding.
Kane tossed the note into the trash can as he waited for the elevator. A moment later, the elevator doors opened silently and he stepped inside, his finger jabbing at the button for the seventh level. The doors closed and, with a shunt, the elevator began to rise.
A moment later the elevator halted and the doors trundled open upon a bland corridor, its walls painted a light tan color. Kane stepped out into the corridor and found a sign pointing him toward D wing. As he strode down the corridor he heard a familiar booming voice and, looking up, saw a man in his late thirties approaching from the other end of the corridor. The man had gray hair, trimmed so close to his scalp as to be almost bald, and his intense dark eyes held the arrogance of authority before he slipped his dark glasses over them, hiding them from sight. This was Salvo, Magistrate watch commander and Kane and Grant’s direct boss.
“Kane,” Salvo boomed as he approached. “I wondered how long it would take for you to come see your little friend.” There was some veiled suggestion in the man’s statement, Kane knew. Salvo disapproved of any Magistrates striking up friendships; the job should be enough and any ties would, according to Mag doctrine, only hold an individual back.
“Good to see you, too, sir,” Kane said, saluting his superior officer automatically. “How is Grant?”
“Alive,” Salvo assured him, “thanks to your quick thinking. That was some good work you did in the field there, Magistrate.” The compliment seemed to irritate Salvo, and he said it through gritted teeth.
“Thank you, sir,” Kane responded emotionlessly. “My only regret is that I couldn’t save McKinnon, as well.”
“Rookies go on PPP for a reason,” Salvo lamented. “Some of them don’t survive, and that’s all there is to say about it.”
Kane inclined his head once in acknowledgment. “Sir.”
They stood in silence for a moment, Salvo looking intensely at Kane’s shades and the hidden eyes behind them. “You’re back on duty tomorrow,” Salvo said, finally, “when I’ll be assigning your new partner.”
“Yes, sir,” Kane replied, saluting once again before Salvo strode away toward the bank of elevators.
Kane made his way to room 17 and rapped his knuckles lightly against the open door. He heard muttered cursing come from inside before Grant’s voice invited him in.
“Hey, tough guy,” Kane said as he entered the room. Grant lay before him, his large body filling the top half of the high bed. Kane’s eyes took the whole scene in in less than a second, realizing that Grant’s body stopped just beneath the torso. “What’s all the cussing about?”
“I thought you were someone else,” Grant admitted. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
“Yeah.” Kane smiled. “I just saw our esteemed commander in the corridor. I guess you’re popular.”
“That’s popularity I could do without,” Grant admitted. “So, how are you? Things were pretty nasty yesterday, man. No broken bones?”
“Not even a scratch,” Kane told his partner apologetically, propping his dark glasses up in his hairline. “I’m sorry you didn’t come out of it quite so well, Grant. Really.”
“Yeah,” Grant responded. “Well, that’s the job.”
Kane looked at Grant lying there, and his eyes flicked once more to the place where Grant’s legs should be.
“You can look,” Grant told him, “it’s okay. I know they’re gone.”
Kane shook his head and cursed under his breath. “I wish I could have done something,” he told Grant.
“You did do something, Kane,” Grant assured him. “That’s why I’m here. We’re partners, and you did what you had to to get me out of there alive.”
“Yeah.” Kane nodded. “Partners.”
Grant held his gaze, considering his words carefully. “You know you’re a good guy, Kane,” he finally said, “and I appreciate what you did.”
“But…” Kane began.
“No buts,” Grant cautioned him. “Salvo’s promised me a job behind a desk somewhere in command and, well, you know, I’ve been longing to get off the beat for a while now. It’s a good thing, man, it really is.”
Kane shook his head, looking at Grant. “What am I going to do without my partner?” he asked, yet he felt selfish for even saying it.
“There are other partners,” Grant told him. “Good people, good Mags. You’ll do okay.”
“You and me?” Kane began. “We were more than a team. We knew each other, knew how to react to situations. We were like one of those mythical beasts, one creature with two heads.”
Grant laughed at that. “Yeah, like—what was it? Cerberus, the dog at the gates of Hell,” he said. “Yeah, that’s us, all right.”
“The hound of Hades.” Kane chuckled, then he felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck as he remembered his discussion with the psychiatrist the day before. He shook his head, dismissing the coincidence. “Weird,” he grunted.
“You know,” Grant said after a moment, “this is a good thing. Really. I wasn’t kidding about the desk job. It’s so stupid to think, but I kind of feel like this is a good move for me. The very thing I wanted. I kept applying for it and, well, now I’ve got it.”
“And all it took was a terrorist with a molly,” Kane growled. “Careful what you wish for, and all that.”
“Well,” Grant conceded, “there were probably easier ways to get a transfer. But it’s done now.”
Kane smiled bitterly as he looked out the window. “Yeah, I guess it is. Can only live the life you’re given, right?”
BRIGID BAPTISTE WORKED at her terminal in the hushed Historical Division of Cobaltville. She sat before her computer in the little cubicle facing the stone wall, her red tresses tied back in a severe bun, wearing a tight blue bodysuit, her rectangular-framed eyeglasses perched on her nose. This day she was altering the details of a document concerning the clinical trials of a certain medicine. A derivative of the medicine in question was in general use among the lower levels, and it wouldn’t do to trigger a panic with such out-of-date information.
“Delete paras two, three, seven,” Brigid spoke into her mike pickup. The computer highlighted the paragraphs and eliminated them in a blink. “Insert new para two as follows,” Brigid continued, still seeing the original paragraph in her mind’s eye. “Test dates as previous. Subjects tested—150. Period of trial…”
Just then, the comm unit that was attached to her computer buzzed and Brigid issued the instruction to halt the rewriting program before she answered. The operator for the Historical Division appeared in a window on Brigid’s computer display.
“Miss Baptiste,” the operator explained, “there is a call for you from the educational facility. A Miss Hargreaves, J clearance level confirmed.”
“Accept,” Brigid said, and the teacher’s face appeared on the comm screen window of her terminal. Hargreaves was a young woman, younger than Brigid, with dark blond hair that brushed across her shoulders, and a pair of circular, wire-framed spectacles on the bridge of her nose, her own symbol of office.
“Miss Hargreaves, how may I be of assistance?” Brigid invited.
“It’s your daughter,” Hargreaves began before correcting herself, “I’m sorry, I mean your niece.”
“That’s okay.” Brigid laughed. “It’s a mistake I even find myself making sometimes.”
“We were rehearsing Abi’s part in the play and she had a slight fall, nothing major, I assure you. She seems quite upset and has become disruptive, so I think it would probably be better if she were to be taken home.”
“I’ll come right over,” Brigid replied, glancing to her side to see where her elderly supervisor was.
“Honestly, Brigid,” Miss Hargreaves continued, “it’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I think she just needs a little love and attention, someone to make a fuss over her.”
Brigid assured the woman that she would be there as soon as she could.
“It’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” the teacher repeated before disconnecting.
Worried, Brigid waited for her supervisor to relieve her.
GRANT SAT in a wheelchair as Elaine pushed him around the bland corridors of the Cappa Level medical hub.
“It must be nice to get out of that little room,” Elaine said, smiling down at him.
“Yeah,” Grant agreed, “it’s a party.”
Elaine stopped pushing his wheelchair then, bringing him to a halt. “Magistrate Grant,” she said sternly, “we’re going to be positive, aren’t we?”
Grant looked at the nurse, her russet hair shining beneath the strip lights of the corridor. “We’ll try,” he said, nodding.
“I believe you are a very brave man, Magistrate,” Elaine told him, pushing the chair along as a doctor rushed past them toward the theater, “and I would like to ask a favor of you.”
That was unexpected, Grant thought, but he nodded encouragingly. “Ask away,” he told her.
“I appreciate that it may be difficult at first, even for a very brave man, to manage by himself, after all you’ve been through,” Elaine said earnestly. “I live alone, but my apartment is large and it’s on the first floor, so there’s no elevator, no stairs. I wonder if perhaps you might come live with me. Is that allowed? For a Magistrate, I mean?”
Stunned, Grant looked at her. She was a beautiful woman, healthy and probably fifteen years his junior. He saw then what she had meant when she called him a brave man so many times in their conversations. She had really meant, “I’m falling in love with you, Magistrate,” and he hadn’t noticed it at all. She had spent so much time with him, it never dawned on him that she had other patients, that she was with him because of something other than her responsibilities.
“Elaine,” he asked, “can you do something for me?”
She leaned down, her wonderful smile showing beside his face. “What would you like me to do, Grant?”
“It’s hard for me to see you at this angle,” he told her. “I’d like you to stand there, in front of me, just for a moment.” He pointed at the corridor ahead of his wheelchair.
Elaine stepped from behind the chair and walked ahead, her head bowed a little and her feet dragging slightly with self-consciousness. Grant watched her walk with her back to him, peering over her shoulder through the curtain of her hair, dressed in the pressed white linen garment of her post. She was tall, long of limb and thin, with just enough flesh on her bones to add womanly curves where she needed them.
After six paces, Elaine turned and stood there, facing Grant in his chair, giggling just a little and blushing as he admired her. The curved hips, the swell of her breasts, accentuated where the white linen clung to it. Her hair, that wonderful reddish-brown that reminded him of fall days when it was still warm, when the summer had yet to really make way for winter. The top button of her dress was open, the collar of the uniform spreading like petals, accentuating her long, pale-skinned neck. The smooth, rounded chin, that wonderful, elfin smile, a little stub of nose and her hazel eyes, so full of promise and mischief.
She was a dream.
CLOUD SINGER WAS BACK in Realworld along with Broken Ghost, who had gone to speak with the elders, requesting spiritual support before the final push against the devils of Cerberus. Cloud Singer was left alone in the cave with Digital River as he monitored the three Cerberus warriors who were held in stasis within the trap.
“How are they?” Cloud Singer asked, her sudden question surprising Decimal River.
The young man turned to her, his fingers never leaving the keyboard. “Everything’s as expected, Cloud Singer,” he assured her. “They’re not getting out anytime soon.”
“Could they get out?” she asked thoughtfully.
Decimal River shrugged. “With enough willpower coupled with a dreamslicer or something similar, it’s theoretically possible,” he mused. “But it wouldn’t happen. Everything they want is there. There’s no reason for them to wish to leave.”
“What about their physical bodies?” Cloud Singer suggested.
“The body’s just an extension of the mind,” Decimal River told her. “A physical manifestation. If the mind tells us it’s there, then it’s there, whether we are connected to it or not.”
Cloud Singer nodded once, conceding his philosophical point. “And the world? What of the world?”
“It’s their world,” Decimal River said. “It’s where they grew up, with just a few alterations to make it more attractive.”
“They didn’t grow up in the Cerberus facility?” Cloud Singer asked.
“No,” the computer expert replied. “I hacked into the personnel files that Cerberus has on them. All three were born in a settlement called Cobaltville, a utopian city in Colorado.”
“Then why did they leave?” Cloud Singer wondered.
“Who knows?” Decimal River replied. “They’re back home now, with no knowledge of any other life. I’ve attached a piece of coding to their digital files that we now hold in stasis, a tail code that affects their thinking. Like endorphins, pumping into their brains, making them happy.”
“I don’t want them to be happy,” Cloud Singer spit angrily. “They killed Neverwalk. They killed Rock Streaming and Rabbit in the Moon and Good Father and Bad—”
“Enough!” Broken Ghost’s sharp voice came from behind Cloud Singer, and the pale assassin stood in the doorway to the cave, a frown on her painted face. “Are you a warrior or a child, Cloud Singer?”
“They killed them,” Cloud Singer yelled. “We should bathe in their blood for what they did—” Cloud Singer stopped, suddenly aware that both Broken Ghost and Decimal River were looking at her with disappointment. Cloud Singer took a long, deep breath, tamping down her fury. “I don’t want them to be happy,” she said finally, her voice low.
“Do you remember what I told you in the Dreaming?” Broken Ghost said calmly. “How desire was a parasite?”
Cloud Singer nodded.
“Desire and happiness are intertwined,” Broken Ghost continued. “We lose ourselves in our lover’s embrace, Cloud Singer. We lose ourselves in happiness.” And then Broken Ghost posed a question. “And if we are too happy…?”
“We lose ourselves,” Cloud Singer reasoned, “until we cease to be.”
The assassin nodded in silent response.
IT WAS HER SMILE, Kane thought. That’s what really did it.
He sat at a patio table outside the café, his long black coat hanging from the back of the chair, his regulation shades still covering his eyes as he tucked in to the light salad before him. Sitting across from him was a beautiful dark-haired woman with chocolate-colored eyes, explaining the fundamental differences between the current, prevailing art schools of Snakefishville, Mandeville and Cobaltville. She smiled as she spoke, warming to her subject despite Kane’s ignorance. Her smile was wide, and it reached up to touch the tiny creases at the edges of her dark eyes.
“Right now the Snakefishville school are doing some interesting experimentation with color, very bold strokes, really expressive,” the woman—Kane’s mother—continued, that beautiful, infectious smile touching everyone who looked at her, “but it’s a retread of things we’ve seen in the history books.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Kane asked, taking a mouthful of salad.
“Like life, art should always move forward, Kane,” his mother explained. “Haven’t I drummed that much into you by now?”
Kane looked a little embarrassed. “I have trouble keeping all the different pieces straight in my head,” he confessed, looking down at his plate. When he looked up and saw his mother’s disappointed look, he shrugged and added, “If I’m honest.”
Kane’s mother laughed. “Yes, your father did a very good job of ensuring you knew all about the laws and the reasons for unification, but he didn’t have much time for the other things in life. The…” She stopped herself.
“What?” Kane inquired. “What is it?”
“I was about to say ‘the nobler things,’” his mother said, pushing a lettuce leaf around her plate, “but, of course, what you do is very noble indeed.”
Kane put his fork down. “Well, it’s a job.”
His mother reached forward, touching Kane gently on his tanned arm and smiling with sincerity. “Kane, being a Magistrate isn’t a job—it’s a calling. I couldn’t be more proud of you, and I would never expect you to do anything else.”
Kane nodded. “That means a lot,” he said. It felt strange to say that, as though he had never said such a thing to his mother before. It felt right somehow, having her here, a part of the puzzle that had been missing all his life. “Did you go away?” he asked suddenly, wondering why he felt that way.
“Me?” his mother asked, taken aback. “Oh, no, Kane, I never went away. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Kane said, shaking his head as though that might loosen the nagging feeling that was there.
When he looked up again, there was a young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, running past the café tables that lined the promenade. Incredulous, Kane watched as the boy’s hand reached out and plucked a patron’s bag from the next table to theirs before he ran on. The bag’s owner, a chubby, olive-skinned woman in the clothes of a lab tech, stood and pointed, dumbstruck. “That boy…” she uttered, watching the young thief run off into the crowd.
Kane was on his feet immediately, automatically grabbing his coat from the back of the chair as he rushed onto the sidewalk. He uttered a single word of explanation—“Duty”—to his mother as he dashed into the surging crowd after the disappearing thief. Proudly, his mother watched him work.
PROPPED AGAINST A STACK of pillows, Grant sat up in bed and gazed out of the medical room’s window at the familiar buildings of Cobaltville. It was a beautiful place, the result of a hundred years of desperation and a hundred more of struggle to perfect peace. He could conceive of nothing right then that might ever drag him willingly away from this place, this idyllic ville.
“Drag would be right,” Grant muttered, glancing down at the stumps of legs he now had.
There was something else, though, something at the back of his mind that kept trying to emerge, like an image seen beneath a flicking overhead lamp. He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath as he focused on whatever was nagging at him.
Kane, his partner.
A man whom Grant trusted more than anyone else in Cobaltville, anyone else on the planet. Kane was always in sync with him, always able to cover for him and second-guess his moves.
What was it they had said? Like a mythical beast. Like Cerberus, the hound of Hades.
The image appeared then, fully formed, a vivid, garish painting of the three-headed dog, its powerful legs and snapping jaws, the reflection of the fires of the underworld in its eyes. It wasn’t alive; he knew that. It was something else, a picture, a vid, a dream.
Grant opened his eyes. “Cerberus,” he mumbled, feeling the play of the syllables on his mouth. “Cerberus, the hound of Hades.”
KANE’S EYES WERE locked on the retreating figure of the thief as the boy weaved through the crowd. People were already stepping aside, recognizing Kane as an off-duty Magistrate because of his clothes and the dark lenses over his eyes. Those who didn’t step out of his way were shoved aside by Kane as he chased after the boy. His automatic instinct was to call the Sin Eater to hand with a tensing of his wrist tendons, but off duty he wasn’t armed—the weapon was held in a secure locker in his small apartment.
BRIGID CARRIED Abigail’s satchel as she walked her niece to the school gates. She could see that Abigail was fidgeting; she kept pulling at the sleeve of her top.
“Leave it alone, Abi,” Brigid warned her. Abi looked up at her, her emerald eyes wide. “But it hurts!” she whined.
“I know it hurts, munchkin, but it will only hurt more if you pick at it,” Brigid warned her.
Abi set her face in an annoyed sneer and stormed along beside Brigid. “It’s all Lakesh’s fault,” she huffed.
Brigid stopped in her tracks and just stared at the girl. “What?” she asked after a moment. “What did you just say?”
“I said it was all Lauren’s fault,” Abigail whined. “She pushed me and I fell off the stage. She did it deliberately.”
Brigid stood stock-still, her hand reaching out and holding on to the open gate to the school for a moment as she held a breath. “Lauren,” she finally muttered.
“I’m going to punch her on the nose,” Abi insisted, “and pull all her hair out.”
Brigid looked at her niece, who was just a bundle of fury right then. “Don’t do that, little darling,” Brigid said calmly. “It was just an accident.”
The sleeve of Abi’s top was ruffled and torn, and there was a nasty scab running along her arm, with dried blood in blotches on the sleeve itself. However, the fall from the stage hadn’t done any permanent damage. It had just shaken Abigail up a bit and left her feeling resentful toward her classmate, reason enough to remove her for the day, according to Miss Hargreaves. Looking at her furious niece right now, Brigid was inclined to agree.
Brigid crouched on her haunches, bringing her head level with Abi’s. “Don’t be like that, munchkin,” she told her gently. “It’s fun skipping school sometimes, and it’s even more fun when you’re a grown-up.”
“Auntie Brigid, you don’t even go to school,” Abigail reasoned.
“That’s true.” Brigid smiled, her hand reaching up to untie her red hair from its tight bun. “I get to cut work instead, which is way, way better,” she explained, shaking her hair out so that it fell halfway down her back. “And I get to eat ice cream.”
Abi’s eyes lit up. “You do?”
“If we stop and buy some,” Brigid admitted. “Which means we’re going to have to walk. Is that okay, munchkin?”
Abi stuck out her bottom lip as though in deep concentration. “Ice cream monster says yes,” she decided.
Brigid stood up, taking Abi’s hand as they walked along the sunny promenade toward the market area. “What’s an ice cream monster?” she asked.
“I am,” Abi said reasonably. “I got taken over by an ice cream monster and now I can only eat ice cream.”
Brigid looked at Abi as they wandered along, feeling a sudden shiver run down her spine. Possessed by an ice cream monster? she thought. Did that happen to Abi once? Did it happen to me? She shook herself, realizing how foolish it sounded. Get a grip on yourself, Baptiste, she thought. Ice cream monsters aren’t real.
AHEAD OF KANE, the thief was making good progress, his thin, wiry form slipping through the crowd like liquid, instinctively drawn toward the path of least resistance. Kane called out to the boy, instructing him to halt immediately, using the Magistrate voice of command.
The crowd parted around Kane as he rushed on, head down, breath coming faster now as he pumped his arms and legs to increase his pace. “I told you to stop,” Kane instructed as the boy leapfrogged a concrete bollard and dashed into the busy market square.
Kane hurdled the bollard and rushed into the market, as well. The teen thief looked over his shoulder, fear in his eyes as he saw the Mag bearing down on him. The woman’s bag was still in his hand and he tipped it upside down, shaking the contents loose as he rushed through the main thoroughfare between the market stalls.
Kane powered ahead, ignoring the strewed contents of the bag in favor of catching the perp. He’d sling this little idiot in a cell, get him off the streets, let the system bury him. No one ran from a Magistrate.
The running thief leaped sideways, narrowly avoiding a collision with a woman pushing a baby carriage along the paved area, then he ducked between two stalls and out of sight. Kane followed, vaulting over the carriage and shoving his way along the thoroughfare, keeping pace with the retreating thief running behind the stalls. The thief continued to run, but his pace was slowing now, and Kane knew that he had him. The Mag fitness regime demanded exceptional endurance from personnel. Kane could easily outrun one teenage thief; the only things working to the boy’s advantage up until now had been his head start and his smaller size.
Suddenly the boy stopped, finding himself trapped at the end of an aisle of stalls. Kane waited at the other side of the stall, peering beneath and seeing the thief’s feet as he seemed to dance on the spot, looking for another escape route. Suddenly, the boy pushed straight ahead, and the stall before Kane trembled and began to topple, its collection of trinkets and old books slipping from their displays. Kane held out his arm, catching the top of the stall and rocking it backward with a powerful shove, trinkets falling all around him, clattering to the sidewalk.
“Give it up, boy,” Kane instructed. “There’s nowhere left to run.”
But the thief wasn’t done yet. He began running back the way he had come, and with a curse, Kane followed. In a moment, Kane zipped between two stalls and found himself in the area behind them, the thief’s wiry figure ten paces ahead. The space behind the stalls was a narrow alleyway, with a high brick wall towering to Kane’s right, green moss attacking the mortar between the red bricks.
Kane ran on, conscious of the boy’s sagging shoulders. Adrenaline was keeping the thief moving now, but he was running out of energy. With a spurt of speed, Kane picked up his pace once more and reached forward. With a swift movement, Kane had grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt, dragging him backward as his feet kicked ahead. As Kane came to a sudden, decisive halt, the boy tumbled to the floor, hitting the cobbled paving stones back-first with a solid thump. The thief cried out as he hit, pain painted across his face.
“What the fuck! You almost killed me,” the boy panted as he lay on his back on the hard ground.
“You’d deserve it, too,” Kane snarled, looming over the fallen figure. “Never disobey the command of a Magistrate.”
The boy struggled to a crouching position, then pulled himself up by leaning against the solid wall beside him. Kane stood over him, glaring at the thief through his dark lenses.
“You got the bag, didn’t you?” the boy snarled. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
Kane looked emotionless as he replied. “I got the perp. That’s what I wanted.”
Kane marched the boy out from behind the market stalls, and the crowd of shoppers parted. Something caught Kane’s eye as he walked behind the thief. He glanced around, spotting a beautiful girl, perhaps five or six years old, with honey-blond hair falling halfway down her back. The girl stood at a stall specializing in frozen foods, and for a moment her eyes rested on Kane.
The girl’s eyes were a vibrant emerald, familiar and yet he couldn’t place it.
As Kane walked past with the perp, a tall woman stepped out from the cover of the stall, folding the top over on the brown paper bag she held. The woman was slender, with pale skin and a curvaceous body wrapped in the blue bodysuit of the Historical Division. Her hair was a vibrant red-gold, flowing in a cascade over her shoulders and down her back, falling level with the underside of her breasts. The woman inclined her head to speak to the girl, the afternoon sun catching the rectangular lenses of her spectacles, and her smile seemed warm and honest. Behind her glasses, her eyes were that distinctive, familiar emerald color.
Even as he walked past her, Kane knew he had to see this woman again.