There is a particular strength that a person can find on the far side of fear, and it is not the strength of not being afraid — I was afraid the whole time — but the strength of having something to do with the fear, a task, a method, a way of turning the thing that was meant to paralyze you into the thing that will eventually undo him.

I stopped bracing against Gregory’s threats and started collecting them.

And a man who is threatening a woman who is calmly collecting his threats is not, though he does not yet know it, in charge of anything at all.

Chapter 8 — Colette

That week, Nadia found something that changed the entire shape of the thing.

She located a woman named Colette, and the moment Colette was shown a photograph of Gregory, she went still.

“When I knew him,” Colette said, on a quiet phone call, “he called himself Beckett.” She had been raw from a hard breakup when he appeared in her life.