I listened to the small noises of her sucking on her collar, to her breathing slowing and deepening into sleep. She smelled of wild cold air, cigarettes and blackberries. Her coat was sodden with rain, soaking through my pajamas and chilling my skin. I lay still, looking into the dark and feeling her hair wet against my cheek, waiting for the dawn.
Acknowledgments
I owe huge thank-yous to a lot of people: Josh Kendall at Viking, Ciara Considine at Hachette Books Ireland and Sue Fletcher at Hodder & Stoughton, for being the kind of editors every writer dreams of having; Clare Ferraro, Ben Petrone, Meghan Fallon and everyone at Viking; Breda Purdue, Ruth Shern, Ciara Doorley and everyone at Hachette Books Ireland; Swati Gamble, Emma Knight, Jaime Frost and everyone at Hodder & Stoughton; the wonderful fairy godmothers at the Darley Anderson Agency, especially Maddie, Rosanna, Zoe, Kasia, Sophie and Clare; Steve Fisher of Agency for the Performing Arts; Rachel Burd, for copyediting with a detective’s eye for detail; Dr. Fearghas O Cochlain, for answering questions that have probably got him on some kind of list; Alex French, for the computer-y bits, both on the page and off; David Walsh, who is responsible for all the correct bits of police procedure and none of the incorrect ones; Oonagh “Sandbox” Montague, Ann-Marie Hardiman, Kendra Harpster, Catherine Farrell, Dee Roycroft, Mary Kelly, Susan Collins and Cheryl Steckel, for laughs, talks, pints, hugs and lots of other good things; David Ryan, who made me put this in Wingdings; my parents, Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi (without whom this book would have been finished around 2015) and David French; and, as always and in more ways than I can count, my husband, Anthony Breatnach.
Tana French
