Julian stopped dead in his tracks.

Evelyn, browsing behind him, walked straight into his back and nearly dropped her designer handbag.

“Julian Vance?” the lead federal marshal called out, stepping forward with his badge displayed.

Julian’s face lost every drop of its color.

“Yes?” he managed.

“What, what is this?

There’s been some kind of mistake, I think—” “You are under arrest,” the marshal said, calmly, “for federal international parental kidnapping, document theft, and grand larceny.” And I imagine, in that moment, that Julian’s mind did exactly what mine had done sixteen hours earlier in a hotel room in Phuket: it refused, at first, to accept the evidence in front of it, because the scene before him was so completely incompatible with the reality he had constructed.

Except that where my disorientation had lasted only until my training took over, Julian had no training to take over.