Luis snatched Marty’s arms and wrenched them behind his back. Marty’s shoulder muscles screamed. Delgado strode towards him, rolling up his shirtsleeves, and Marty tensed his gut.

Somewhere on the screen, that bastard Franco was making his move and Marty was going to pay for protecting him. Sweat slid down his face.

But hey, what the hell?

After all, once upon a time they’d been friends.

Chapter 3

Harry nudged through the crowds, following the fat guy along the cobbled streets of the Old Quarter.

Glasses clinked from the tourist-filled bars, and the air was thick with the salty scent of sausage. Harry fixed her gaze on the figure ahead. He must have been a hundred pounds overweight, but it didn’t seem to slow him down.

She picked up the pace, trying to fix her bearings. Navigational challenges were never her strong point, and she hadn’t been here long enough to tag many landmarks. She scanned the medieval-looking buildings. There were plenty of signs, but most of them in Basque, with its unintelligible x’s and k’s.

Up ahead, the fat guy moved like a barge, parting the crowds in a backwash behind him. He made a sharp right, and Harry trotted after him into another lantern-lit alleyway.

She recalled how he’d smoothed a hand over his hair at the casino. If her guess was correct, it was some kind of signal, a cue for his accomplices to cut and run. Right now, he was probably headed for an emergency location, or maybe back to wherever he was staying.

Just stay in the casino. Nothing can happen in front of the cameras.

She flicked a quick glance over her shoulder. All she planned to do was pinpoint an address. At least then she’d have something to offer Riva before terminating their arrangement.

Harry winced. Backsliding out of a job made her insides squirm, but the truth was, Riva didn’t need her. Harry’s expertise was in computer security, investigating forensics and security breaches for criminal and civil litigation. At least, that was the whitewashed version. Actually, she’d been a hacker since the age of nine and that was still what she did best. But whatever her skills, she certainly wasn’t equipped to crack open a ring of casino cheaters.

She huffed out a breath, picking her way over the cobbles. The maze of laneways reminded her of Temple Bar, Dublin’s alleged Bohemian Quarter, though the cobbles here were easier on her feet. The thought of her native Dublin triggered another squirm. Ever since her return from Cape Town a few months before, she’d had trouble settling back into her hometown. All her ties were there: her parents, her sister, her friends, her business. And Hunter, of course. The detective who’d recently stirred her body chemistry, brewing up something she didn’t quite recognize. But still, Dublin left her feeling displaced. Like a jigsaw piece tidied into the wrong box.

The truth had crystallized during a rare phone call with her mother.

‘A vagrant, just like your father,’ her mother had said. ‘You’ve moved three times in the last twelve months. Different homes, different countries, different jobs. Are you the same with men? Hopping from one bed to the other?’

Harry’s cheeks stung at the memory. Jesus, weren’t mothers supposed to be on your side? But at least the woman’s hostility had made her face facts. Harry’s sense of dislocation wasn’t new. Nothing like having a frosty mother all your life for making you an outsider in your own home.

Glass shattered on the cobbles behind her. Harry squeezed through a scrum of tourists, still keeping tabs on the fat guy. Her feet ached, and it occurred to her she was wasting her time. Maybe he was just a regular punter who had nothing to do with Franco Chavez.

She squinted through the alleyway. The fat guy shot a glance over his shoulder. Then he dipped his head, switched gears and put more distance between them. Harry frowned. Had he spotted her?

She hung back, her eyes roaming the busy tangle of streets. Tiers of wrought-iron balconies loomed above her, and every alley seemed to converge on a Gothic church spire. Her back tingled. She was worryingly far from her navigational comfort zone.

Something tugged at her gut, willing her to turn back. Was there really any point in following a guy who knew she was there? She slowed her pace, giving in to the notion. Then suddenly the fat guy stopped and spun around.

Harry jerked to a halt. Goosebumps erupted along her arms. He was staring right at her. His gaze drifted over her shoulder, his eyes widening. Then he whirled away and barrelled down the laneway.

Harry whipped her head around. What had he seen? She scoured the narrow backstreet, searching for false notes. She peered at the tourists, at the local Basque vendors, but nothing seemed out of place.

Was someone else following him?

She snapped her eyes back. He’d almost disappeared, and she took off after him at a jog, not sure of her intentions. She followed him to the end of the laneway and found herself on the edge of a large, open square. Sandstone buildings enclosed it on all sides, with rows of balconies rising up like seats in an amphitheatre. At ground level, the square was bordered by a colonnade of shadowy archways.

Harry felt her limbs relax. Finally, a place she recognized: the city’s old bullring, Plaza de la Constitución.

She slowed to a walk, scanning the area. It was less crowded in here, and the place scattered echoes like an empty church. You could still see the numbers over the shuttered windows from a time when the balconies were rented out as seats.

Harry spotted the fat guy scurrying for cover under the walkway of arched porticos. She hesitated. The porches looked gloomy, in spite of the lanterns dotting the colonnades. Better to stick to the safety of open country. Besides, he had to emerge sooner or later to exit back onto the streets.

She struck out across the plaza in line with the archways, trailing his ample silhouette as he blundered in and out of the shadows. Voices echoed in the hollow acoustics, and for an instant, Harry heard the roar of crowds lusting for blood at the bullfights. An image thrust itself into her head: a quivering animal, slashed and butchered, who could do nothing but stand and bleed. She shuddered, shaking the memory off. Her father had taken her to a bullfight as a child. It was the first time she’d seen violent death.

She blinked and focused back on the porticos, waiting for the fat guy to reappear. She slowed to a halt. Flicked her gaze across the arches.

There was no sign of him.

Shit. Had he doubled back? She whirled around, scouring the square. Nothing.

Dammit.

Harry peered at the gloomy archways. The notion of going in there made her spine hum. She dug her nails into her palms, then edged across the plaza and stepped under the portico, retracing the fat guy’s steps. By now, the square was almost empty. Her shoes slapped chapel-like echoes off the walls, and a chill skittered through her. Then something behind her made a bubbling sound, and she turned.

The fat guy was sitting on the ground, leaning against one of the columns. He was staring up at her, his eyes wide. He looked as though he was about to accuse her of something. Then she saw the bloody gash that had ripped his throat open, and she screamed.

Chapter 4

‘You’re a long way from home, Miss Martinez.’

Harry eyed the detective perched against the desk in front of her. He was leafing through her passport, his nostrils flared as though he’d found a dead bug between the pages.

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I’m working for a client.’

She shifted in her chair. Riva was certainly one of the reasons she was here, anyway. The detective regarded her down the length of his nose. It was slightly hooked and, with his close-set eyes, it gave him the look of an eagle.

His name was Vasco. He was an inspector with the Ertzaintza, the police force of the Basque country, and so far he was the fourth guy to interview her about the events of last night.

He turned his attention to a stapled report, probably her signed statement. Fatigue shuddered through her. The police had grilled her till three in the morning, and had started again soon after breakfast. By now, it was early evening and what little sleep she’d got had been slashed by images of blood-soaked, slaughtered bulls.

‘You have been in San Sebastián before.’

Harry frowned. He made it sound like an accusation. And besides, how did he know?

‘That was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘My father brought me on visits as a child. He was born here.’

‘You have family in the city?’

She brushed at an imaginary speck of dust on her skirt. ‘I’m not sure.’

Her memories of those childhood trips were flimsy as cobwebs. Her older sister, Amaranta, had been there with her, but for reasons Harry had never understood, their mother had refused to come. Harry fiddled with the strap of her bag. Her personal link with San Sebastián was another reason she’d taken the job, but so far, she’d been too busy for cosy family reunions.

Her stomach dipped with an odd emptiness. The alienation she’d felt in Dublin had left a void like a doughnut hole inside her. She’d found herself re-examining her past, as if that would somehow plug the cavity: her nomadic Dublin childhood, where her father’s gambling had kept their finances on a pendulum swing; the upheavals from house to house, in line with his cashflow; the upmarket mansions, the low-rent bedsits, the ever-changing schools. She realized she had few treasured memories of ‘home’, the kind that others called nostalgia and that tied your heart to a place.

Harry swallowed against a pesky fullness in her throat. The job in San Sebastián had come at the right moment. She’d never fully explored the Spanish side of her identity, and it was probably time that she did.

Vasco tossed her passport into her lap, then strutted back around the desk. She took in his tall, elegant frame; the expensive suit and the slicked-back hair. The first ertzaina she’d talked to had been a uniformed guard, dishevelled from overwork. This guy looked more like a politician than a cop.

He sat down behind the desk, flipping up his coat-tails like a concert pianist taking position. ‘Tell me again why you followed him.’

His English was precise, his accent almost Etonian. The other cops had been relieved to revert to Spanish with Harry, but not Vasco. She pegged it as vanity, but to be fair, his fluency was impressive. Harry sighed.

‘I’ve already explained, I saw him—’

‘I know what you saw. Please answer my question. Why did you follow him? Why not follow the man you say collected the winnings?’

Harry pictured the American with his thatch of greying hair, queuing up at the cage. ‘He’d won a large amount of money. Assuming the casino was following regulations, he’d need to fill out forms with proven ID before cashing in that amount.’

‘So?’

Harry shrugged. ‘So I figured the casino already had a line on him. The other guy was the unknown quantity.’ For an instant, her breeziness deserted her and she was back in the old bullring: wide, staring eyes; butchered gullet. She swallowed. ‘Do you know who he was?’

Vasco stared at her, hawk-like, and didn’t answer. Then he said, ‘What is your connection with Riva Mills?’

‘I told you, she’s my client.’

‘And that’s all?’

Harry frowned. ‘What else would there be?’

‘So she contacts you out of the blue. An American businesswoman based in San Sebastián decides to hire a technology expert from Dublin.’ He leaned forward. ‘Who just happens to be you.’

‘It didn’t happen out of the blue. I was recommended to her by a mutual friend.’

‘What friend?’

‘Her name’s Roslyn Bloomberg.’ Harry watched him write it down. ‘She’s a diamantaire based in New York. My father’s known her for years, and it turns out Riva’s a client of hers.’

Harry had been surprised when she’d heard that Ros had recommended her. They’d parted on bad terms in Cape Town a few months before. For reasons too complex to sort through at the time, Ros had believed that Harry was a thief. Other people’s opinions didn’t usually count with Harry, but Ros had come close to being a substitute mother for a while. It hurt to be rejected by two mothers in a row, whatever way you looked at it.

Vasco slapped an eight-by-ten photograph on the desk. ‘Take a good look. He was a countryman of yours.’

Harry’s skin turned cold. The fat guy’s face shone back at her like a moon. His eyes were pale, his skin doughy and bloated. She couldn’t see his throat, but guessed that when he posed for the shot, he was already dead. Her insides shrivelled.

Vasco tapped the photo with a pen. ‘His name was Stephen McArdle. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve built quite a profile on him. Thirty-four years old, born in Belfast. Started off doing work for IRA splinter groups, then later for Colombian revolutionaries, the PLO, even our own Basque separatists.’

Harry frowned, picturing the clumsy figure who’d barged ahead of her through the backstreets. ‘He was a terrorist?’

‘He was a hacker, Miss Martinez.’ Vasco’s gaze drilled into hers. ‘Just like you.’

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. She was about to reply when the door swung open. A short, stocky man shambled into the room and dropped a folder onto the desk. He stared at Harry. His unshaven face drooped with middle age, and his head looked too large for his body, though maybe that was down to his mess of dark, woolly curls. He took a seat by the wall, his eyes never leaving her face. Vasco went on, ignoring the interruption.

‘McArdle hired himself out to anyone who paid him well enough.’

Harry hesitated. The newcomer’s stare was unnerving. She cleared her throat.

‘Paid him well enough to do what?’

‘Help them fund their operations.’

‘By hacking?’

Vasco shrugged. ‘Terrorists raise funding in all sorts of ways. Drugs, smuggling, kidnapping, prostitution. Now they add cybercrime to the list.’

He picked up the folder and browsed through it. It looked like another set of photographs. He slotted one out for a closer look, and kept talking.

‘McArdle had quite the hacker’s pedigree. Credit-card company penetration, ATM heists, cyber protection rackets.’ He peered at her over the glossy eight-by-ten, his look predatory. ‘But then, you know more about this kind of thing than me.’

Harry narrowed her eyes. ‘Look, I don’t appreciate—’

Vasco smacked the photo onto the desk. ‘This man, who is he?’

Harry blinked. She recognized the florid face of the American from the casino.

‘He’s the one who collected the winnings. I don’t know his name.’

‘And this one?’

He tossed down another photo, a headshot of a woman. She looked thirty-something, a brunette with good bones, though the layers of make-up masked her features like a veil. Harry shook her head.

‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘And him?’

Another headshot: a man in his late forties, pale crew cut, eyebrows bleached by the sun. His complexion looked mud-stained with freckles.

Harry shook her head again. ‘No. Is that Franco Chavez?’

Vasco broke eye contact. Over by the wall, his shaggy-haired colleague stirred in his chair. Eventually, Vasco said,

‘We don’t have an ID on Franco Chavez.’

‘I see.’ Harry looked from one to the other, trying to read their discomfort. ‘But these others, they’re all part of the casino-cheating crew?’

‘We believe so.’

‘Why do they need a hacker? Are they really using computers to cheat?’

‘Maybe.’ Vasco tilted his head, as though assessing her. ‘Or maybe they need a hacker for something else.’

Harry squinted. What was he getting at? He leaned forward, his eyes probing hers.

‘We know a lot about you, Miss Martinez.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Such as?’

‘We’ve been in touch with your police force in Dublin. They were very helpful.’ Vasco peered at her like a raptor bird, and Harry tried not to squirm. ‘You started young. I understand you hacked into the Stock Exchange when you were just thirteen.’

Harry’s eyes widened. How the hell did he know about that? No charges were ever filed. A childish misdemeanour, nothing more. Vasco was still talking.

‘Then more recently, there was the question of several million euros that went missing in the Bahamas. And later, some diamonds in Cape Town. Also missing.’

Harry’s brain raced. She’d sailed close to the winds of larceny more than once, but she’d had her reasons, all of them good ones. Trouble was, she couldn’t prove it. Then again, neither could they. She clenched her fists.

‘I’ve never been arrested for anything.’

‘Your father has. He served six years in prison for insider trading, didn’t he?’

Harry gaped. What was he doing, trying to build some kind of case against her? And for what?

‘Geldi!’

Harry snapped her gaze to the stranger by the wall. He’d shot to his feet, his expression stony, and was firing out what sounded like orders in rapid Basque. Vasco made a chopping motion with his hand, cutting him off. Then he turned back to Harry.

‘Have you talked to Riva Mills since McArdle was killed?’

Harry glared at him. ‘No, I haven’t had the chance.’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘What?’

He advanced around the desk towards her. Her heartbeat tripped. Behind him, his colleague was shaking his head.

‘You have an unusual mixture of skills, Miss Martinez.’ Vasco’s eyes bored into hers. ‘Think about it. You’re a professional hacker who knows her way around a casino. You’re part-Irish, part-Spanish. You have a reputation for bluffing and telling lies, not to mention out-manoeuvring the police. You even have a jailbird for a father. This really is a rare opportunity.’

Harry threw him a cagey look and slowly shook her head. Not in denial of his allegations, since most of them were true, but in an effort to ward off what she knew was coming next.

‘I have a proposition for you.’ Vasco loomed over her like an elegant bird of prey. ‘I want you to go undercover, Miss Martinez. I want you to take McArdle’s place.’

Chapter 5

‘That’s crazy.’ Harry stared at Vasco. ‘I don’t know anything about going undercover.’

But even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. If she was honest, a part of her had always been drawn to the notion of becoming someone else. Her whole childhood, after all, had been a kind of double life.

Vasco’s phone rang. He held up a hand, as though halting a line of traffic, then moved behind the desk to take the call. Harry sat back to wait, flicking a glance at his colleague, who’d resumed his seat by the wall. He was scowling across at her, his tangled eyebrows jutting out like twin wire brushes. She shifted her gaze. Vasco was treating the guy as though he was invisible, but there was something about him that Harry found impossible to ignore.

She picked at a fingernail and thought about double lives, flashing on an image of her childhood self: wild hair, fists clenched as if braced for unexpected combat. Outwardly, she’d been the girl she called Harry the Drudge, whose mother made her sit alone in her room after school so they wouldn’t have to talk. The rest of the time, Harry had lived as Pirata, an insomniac who sat at her computer in the dark and prowled the electronic underground. For hours, she’d dialled out over slow modems, sharing ideas and downloading hacker tools. As Pirata, she’d been all-powerful, well respected by her crackerjack comrades. As Harry, she’d led a far more hemmed-in existence.

Vasco wrapped up the call, then looked at his watch, a calculated reminder that he was a busy man. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

‘This is an important case, Miss Martinez. We’ve been watching these people for months. I intend to find out what they’re up to, and you can help.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person.’

‘It’s a global investigation.’ He straightened his shoulders. If he’d been a bird, his chest would have swelled. ‘We’re talking about intergovernmental cooperation, very high profile. The United States is involved, Hong Kong, most of Europe, even your own Irish authorities.’

Harry squinted at him. ‘For a crew of casino cheaters?’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Cheating the casinos is just a sideline. These people are involved in something else, something bigger. And I want to know what it is.’

‘I’m not trained for this kind of thing. It won’t work.’

Vasco ignored her and sorted through the photographs on the desk. ‘We know they have links with other criminal organizations. That’s how they came to our attention in the first place.’ He found McArdle’s headshot and tapped it with a manicured forefinger. ‘What I want to know is, why did they hire a hacker?’

Harry’s gaze slid to the lifeless eyes in the photograph. Her insides flickered, an odd mixture of fear and curiosity. But she bit down on both. This had nothing to do with her.

Vasco was still talking.

‘It will be a short, sharp infiltration. Nothing protracted or drawn out. We set things up so that you’re taken on as McArdle’s replacement. You talk to them, find out who their target is, what they want you to do and why. Then you can disappear. An in-out job. And of course, you’ll be well paid.’

Harry lifted her chin. ‘I’m sorry, but this is not the kind of thing that I do.’

Vasco paused. ‘Perhaps you should reconsider. You seem to forget the awkwardness of your position.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You were following McArdle, right up to the moment he died. The casino cameras can place you tailing him out of the building. By your own admission, you pursued him through the streets, all the way to the Plaza. Where he was ambushed and murdered.’

For an instant, Harry’s brain shorted out, a synapse misfiring between hearing words and understanding what they meant. She shook her head.

‘You know why I was following him. You can’t believe I was involved in his death.’

‘Oh, I don’t. But naturally, my investigation must be seen to be thorough. My men will need to dig more into your background, check out your family, your father’s history, involve the relevant Irish authorities. A long, messy process. And from what I’ve heard, your relations with the Irish police are already quite fragile.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I could make life very difficult for you, Miss Martinez.’

Harry felt her jaw tighten. ‘If you think—’

‘On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘if you cooperate with my request, it might go a long way to redeeming your reputation.’

Harry gaped, her brain still playing catch-up.

Vasco fixed her with unblinking, lidless-looking eyes. ‘This case is important to me and, one way or another, I intend to get a result. How cleanly you come out of it is up to you.’

He shot a wrist from his cuff; another showy time-check.

‘I have a meeting.’ He got to his feet, gesturing at his colleague by the wall. ‘This is Detective Zubiri, from our Undercover unit. Talk to him, then give me your answer.’

He snatched a briefcase off the desk and marched out of the room. Harry glared after him, blood seething through her veins. The last thing she needed was to get caught up in a murder case, but Vasco had her in a chokehold. She felt her teeth grind. Suspect or undercover decoy: what kind of half-assed choice was that?

She flopped back in her seat, exhaling a long breath. The silence in Vasco’s wake was suspiciously restful, like the calm of a receding rogue wave. She cast a doubtful look at the detective by the wall. His shoulders were stooped, his clothes wrinkled. For the moment, he seemed disinclined to take up where his boss had left off.

Harry glanced around Vasco’s office, absently taking in the ordered shelves and the clutter-free desk. She recalled the Dublin base where Hunter worked: the unwashed mugs, the overloaded in-trays, the Post-its curling up like tongues from the files. She pictured his face, lean and tired, his sandy hair short as a schoolboy’s, and waited for the pang of homesickness to hit her.

It didn’t.

‘You can go.’

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. Zubiri was ambling towards the desk, his untidy hair coiling out of his head like springs. He gathered up the photos.

‘This is no job for someone like you.’ His voice was low, his Spanish accent distorted by transatlantic tones that probably came from watching American TV.

Harry glanced at the door. Zubiri followed her gaze and shrugged.

‘Why should you get involved? Just so he can look good to the Chief?’ He blew out air with a pff through his lips.

Harry picked at her nail, but made no move to go. She watched him slot the photos back into the folder, McArdle’s bloated face now hidden from view. She leaned forward in her chair.

‘Who are these people? Why are you so interested in them?’

Zubiri shook his woolly head. ‘It’s none of your concern.’

‘Inspector Vasco mentioned criminal organizations. What kind of crimes are we talking about here?’

‘Every kind. The worst kind. Drugs, human trafficking, extortion, armed robberies, fraud . . .’ He slapped the folder onto the desk. ‘These people crop up in a lot of unconnected cases.’

‘And they operate out of San Sebastián?’

Zubiri shrugged. ‘Spain has always been important to criminals.’

‘For drug trafficking?’

‘For everything. Spain is a gateway to Europe, especially for the Moroccans and the Colombians. And Latin Americans can exploit the shared language and culture. Even the Italian clans look on it as a home from home.’

‘I thought all the crime bosses holed up in the south. In the Costa del Sol. Not here in the north.’

Zubiri fixed a pair of black eyes on hers, and Harry shifted in her seat. She was stalling and she knew it, caught between a survival instinct to back away and a more ignoble curiosity. Eventually, he answered her.

‘The northwest has a long history of trafficking with the Colombians. But security on the Galician coast has tightened up. Now the criminals turn to the ports of Euskadi. The Basque country. My country.’

Harry blinked. The intensity of his stare was unnerving. She gestured at the folder on the desk.

‘So where do the cheaters fit in?’

‘Who knows? Dealers, mules, middlemen, hitmen . . .’

Hitmen. Jesus. An image of McArdle’s white face floated before her, the life gushing out of it in bloody bursts. Her insides slithered.

‘Who do you think killed him?’ she said.

Zubiri didn’t need to ask who she meant. ‘We don’t know. But why should you care?’ He leaned forward, supporting his weight on the desk with his knuckles. The backs of his hands were dark and hairy. ‘McArdle was nothing to you. Just a fat Irish hacker working for criminals.’

Harry flinched. A shard of guilt twisted in her chest. She knew she’d blanked McArdle out. Hadn’t thought of him as a person. Hadn’t liked him much, if it came right down to it, though they’d never even spoken. She’d dubbed him ‘the fat guy’, and then found him dead.

She looked up at Zubiri. ‘What else do you know about him?’

He shrugged, straightened up. ‘Quite a lot.’

‘Was he good at what he did?’

Another shrug. ‘So they tell me. Started hacking as a kid. Broke into school networks, messed with phone systems, that kind of thing.’

Harry looked at the floor, as if he might catch a glimpse of her own shady past in her eyes. Zubiri went on:

‘It might have ended there if it hadn’t been for his sister. She got into debt with a heroin habit. McArdle cut a deal with her suppliers in Belfast: he’d repay what she owed by working for them.’

‘As a hacker?’

Zubiri nodded. ‘He needn’t have bothered. He found his sister’s body in an old warehouse a few weeks later. Overdose. The needle was still stuck in her arm.’

‘Jesus.’ Harry closed her eyes briefly, trying to blot the image out. ‘But he kept working for them?’

‘Once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. Just knowing these people, knowing what they do, is enough to put you at risk. They own you. Try to leave and you end up dead in a ditch.’

‘How long was he with them?’

Zubiri paused. ‘Eighteen years.’

Harry’s eyes widened as she worked it out. McArdle was thirty-four. Which meant he’d signed over his soul when he was just sixteen. She shook her head, recalling herself at that age: masquerading as Pirata, flexing her hacking muscles. Just like McArdle.

Pirata: Spanish for pirate. Just a curious explorer on the electronic high seas, testing the limits of technology. But it wasn’t all innocent. She’d breached securities, trespassed where others wouldn’t. She’d felt the searing heat of true piracy in her soul, and had struggled not to abuse her power. One wrong choice and things might have turned out differently.

They almost had.

At the age of thirteen, she’d given into temptation and hacked into the Dublin Stock Exchange. Fuelled by an illicit rush of adrenalin, she’d tampered with financial data. The authorities had tracked her down, but she’d been rescued by a mentor who’d schooled her in the ethics of hacking. She’d stuck to the code of honour ever since.

Well, more or less.

Harry slid a glance at the folder of photographs. If things had been different, could she have ended up like McArdle? A hacker for hire to the wrong kind of client?

Zubiri followed her gaze, then picked up the folder and tucked it under his arm. ‘You should leave. Go home. Forget about this.’

‘And let Vasco loose on me?’

Zubiri looked away. Harry didn’t move.

Go home. To what? To Hunter? Her mother? Her rocky relations with the police? She pictured Vasco raking over her past, maybe even grilling her father. Her muscles tensed. She thought about McArdle, about her San Sebastián roots; about a whole mess of things that together stirred up an urge to hide away and become someone else for a while.

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