A/N: Decided to change the timeline (I edited the first chapter). This is now set roughly six months after Robin and Matthew's wedding.

Edited this chapter as well. Had a bit of a realization and decided to incorporate it here. If you've already read this chap, please read it again.

I've noticed a few members of the online community placing a lot of significance on that infamous voicemail. I'm of the opinion that it contained little more than what was revealed in Career of Evil. Feel free to tell me if you have an opposing theory.

I've fictionalized 3-D printing technology (think Ethan Hunt in "Rogue Nation"). I don't think you can remotely produce accurate 3-D prints of faces. Hope this liberty doesn't bother you too much.

As the train sped on from Tottenham Court Road, Robin's thoughts rested on her reconciliation with Strike. It had hit her during the short walk that had taken her from Denmark Street to the station that Strike had not previously figured heavily in her contemplation. The pull to stay in London had always come from her refusal to permanently lose her job. She did not have any fantasies of flying thousands of miles away then coming back and picking things back up at the office, Strike leaving the position of his partner vacant until her return. She didn't know if private detection flourished in America, but she was certain that she couldn't rely on a temp agency making another mistake and placing her under the wing of an investigator she could build considerable rapport with. It became apparent, now more than ever, that leaving London meant severing the tie—made sturdy by constant fraying and knotting again—she had made with her boss.

Her partner, Robin corrected herself, remembering the conversation that had thrown her back to the office. It had been outside the hall, at nearly the same spot where she had told her mother the vaguest details about Brockbank in front of Strike.

The deluge of speeches came and went; the cake was cut; knives clinked wineglasses and silenced themselves only after Matthew and Robin kissed. The faint buzz of controlled talk and the obligatory congregation of dinner were over, replaced by the thumping bass of electronic music and the scattering of the crowd. Robin excused herself from everyone and, with a grave nod from Matthew, went to Strike and led him outside.

"The Met got Laing. He's the Shacklewell Ripper," Strike said without preamble. "They got Brockbank as well," he added after a pause, knowing the news would bring Robin peace.

"You owe your new ear and nose to Laing, then," Robin said flatly. Concern gripped her the moment she took note of Strike's state, but the rising anger she thought had plateaued reasserted itself with ease.

With Strike's vow that he would leave Masham at the first request came the vow that he would prostrate himself and implore her to go back at the first opportunity. If that meant making uncomfortable admissions and making a fool of himself in the process, then so be it.

"I was an imbecile," Strike said. Robin said nothing, unnerving him, expected though it was. Strike took a steadying breath. "I connected the dots the night of your assault. I knew it wasn't Brockbank when I charged headlong into your—."

"You what?" Robin's simmering anger threatened to explode into outrage. "You accused me of… You told me that night about a church connection the police had made between Brockbank and Kelsey! You knew they were following a false lead and you lay that burden on me because I actually managed to save two children?"

"The business was in shambles, Robin! Carver made it clear he'd drive it to the ground if we so much as lay a finger on any of the suspects."

"And yet you went to Laing."

"I realize—"

"What do you realize, Cormoran? That you shut me out of the investigation on Brockbank—an investigation that had progressed thanks in large part to my effort—to… to what? To keep me safe, when all I needed was to continue to be involved? That you're a bloody hypocrite for doing what you did to Laing after blasting me for what I did to Brockbank? That it was as though the months I had worked for you, worked with you, even when the business was going to shit, amounted to nothing when you sacked me?"

Strike could not come up with a response to the tirade, so Robin said, "Or did you come here to tell me that you could forgive my mistake and chalk it up to my inexperience and unwarranted insubordination?"

Strike's own anger bubbled to the surface, a visceral response to being challenged in the way only Robin seemed to manage. He tamped it down, remembering what he had vowed to do. "I felt I had to protect you." He held up a hand when Robin's mouth opened again. "Hear me out.

"If anything had happened to you, if Laing had raped you or knifed you to a permanent stupor… if he had killed you, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself. It would've blown me to bits. You matter to me, Robin. More than I let on, more than I was prepared to admit even to myself. It left me vulnerable. And you know what a poor sod I am when it comes to vulnerability. I wanted it gone, so I sent you to what I thought were dead ends while I tried to wrap up the investigation on my own.

"I'm sorry, Robin. I have nothing to make you go back except promises to endeavor to treat you as an equal, to keep you informed and involved, but I'm going to ask you to anyway." His heart thumped so wildly in his chest it seemed to have left its perch and was rebounding on every surface of his ribcage. "Will you?"

Robin's expression had visibly softened in the middle of Strike's speech. Strike had just opened up in a manner she had thought him incapable of. This was a man who burned bridges—as his refusal to contact his ex-fiancee would attest to—and didn't give so much as a glance backward. That he was here, telling her all of this, spoke volumes in itself. She had entertained the idea of him begging her to go back, and she had resolved to give him a rough time of it, but now that it was happening she couldn't find it in herself to. "Was going to Alyssa's a mistake?" Robin asked.

Strike found that an odd question to ask. He somehow knew, however, that his response to it would determine Robin's own. He went for honesty. "Yes. You shouldn't have gone off to her." As Robin's face crumpled, he continued, "Not without my help. I would've been more than glad to assist you if Laing had been behind bars before then."

Robin accepted his answer with a nod. "This past week's been hell. Do you understand how much the job means to me?" Robin paused and waited for Strike to look at her directly. "It makes me feel like I have control over my own life, that I can make my own decisions, that I'm not just holding everyone else's hands and allowing them to yank me to where they think I should be. That night when you…" She fought her tears; the last thing she needed was the uncomprehending sympathy of the wedding's attendees. "It all came crashing down. It was like the rape all over again. There I was, assaulted, reduced to a mere victim. Set aside and ineffectual. I had to do something, do you understand?" A tear escaped, and she swiped it clean as though she were swatting a fly. "You could have told me about Laing."

She hit the nail on the head. Much of the guilt that had chipped away at Strike's anger against Robin had come from the fact that he had not bothered to tell her immediately about his epiphany. It would have given her something else to focus on, and she may not have made that premature visit to Brockbank. "Yes, I could have. Been beating myself up over it, believe me. I had no proof then, but I had begun cooking up a plan to get it. You deserved to be a part of that."

In the ensuing pause, Strike almost heard the wheels turn in Robin's head, his ribcage about to burst. Robin looked back into the hall, considering what the guests were thinking about her prolonged absence, and decided that they didn't have a lot of time. She had to give an answer now. It was only a matter of saying it—try as she might to deny it, she had known from the outset what her answer would be if Strike came to her and asked her back. "Alright, then," she said.

"Alright, what?"

"I'll go back."

He heaved a sigh and beamed, fighting the urge to wrap Robin in a tight hug. Robin's faint smile told him that the road ahead wouldn't be easy, but he was lucky that there was still a road to traverse in the first place.

"Why didn't you ring me?" Strike asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"What?"

"I tried to contact you a few days ago. Left a message on voicemail."

"I didn't… Are you sure?"

Strike's quick mind told him that Matthew may have got to it first. Fucking twat. He knew that Robin would easily reach the same conclusion if he told her the truth. However much he disliked Matthew, he didn't want to sully Robin's wedding night by catalyzing an ill-timed row. There was nothing in that voicemail that he hadn't already said to her. "Now that I think about it, no. Maybe I just imagined dialing your number and hearing the beep. Drove me to fucking distraction, it did," Strike said with a smirk, then thought that he may have pushed his luck too far and endangered their tenuous reconciliation. It relieved him when Robin gave a light chuckle, made him promise he'd tell her what happened with Laing, and ushered him back into the hall.

Robin had struggled with her resentment for a few weeks when she had gone back. She had caught herself being short with Strike without reason multiple times. It was a credit to him that he had refused to respond in kind and taken it all in stride, that he had acknowledged Robin's need for distance when she had needed him to.

Their partnership now neared complete mending, and Robin didn't fancy losing grip of it. It struck her that Strike had become a constant in her life, that she had accepted him as such without reservation. To move to New York would be to lose him, and Robin surprised herself with the vehemence with which she reacted to the possibility.

At Holland Park, Robin recognized Beer Belly amongst the crowd that just alighted. She had become accustomed to seeing him only when she was on his tail. The unexpected sighting reminded her of her inadvertent contact with Laing the day she had slipped on roadside curry at Wollaston Close. Strike had yet to establish then that he was the Shacklewell Ripper, and she shivered anew at Laing's unwelcome invitation for her to clean up at his flat.

Her vibrating mobile shook thoughts of Laing away. It was Strike.

Text when home.

Something was up, Robin knew, but the three words told her not to ring Strike and wait until tomorrow for the news.

Home.

The text settled Strike as he lay in bed and sleep eluded him. He had perused the photos after Robin had left, attempting to make out any similarities between the bodies and gathering clues as to their location. He had tried to phone Wardle thrice, but the line had been busy each time.

All the bodies were divested of clothing, revealing stark differences in complexion: black as charcoal, the light tan of leather, and white as milk. Robin's face adorned them up to the base of the neck, the masks betraying themselves by the same unnatural outline above the collarbone. All three lay supine on uneven ground smattered with gravel, their hands at their sides, their heads tilted to show identical bullet holes emphasized by thin red circles of crusted blood, the masks probably hiding messy splatters underneath.

These bodies showed no sign of struggle. Each woman had been rendered powerless before the fatal shot. It was little consolation that death had probably come to them in an instant—that they had not writhed in pain while their lives had bled out—but it was consolation all the same.

When Strike accepted that he wouldn't be able to gather anything more from the photographs, his mobile rang. Wardle.

"Couldn't reach you the past few hours," Strike said as a hello.

"You were calling me? What for?"

"Letterbox. Another delivery."

"Another fucking body part?"

"No. Photos. Not sure which is worse, though." Strike would have found another leg sent through the mail both harrowing and vaguely amusing. His gut told him Wardle's news and the envelope's contents were related, so he refrained from describing the dead women. "What have you got?"

"You won't like it."

"Nobody likes a call from the Met. Tell—"

"Just priming you, pal," Wardle said, a touch irritably. "We got another shit storm. Six bodies in three days, all on the outskirts of London. All of them wore masks and bloody accurate ones at that. Hair, skin, eyes—everything. Looks like the real thing. A bit unnatural up close, but stand far enough away and you'll have the sharpest bloke fooled. They could only have been made using a 3-D printer."

"Jesus. Six bodies, all given new identities?"

"Yes, and here's the bad—"

"Three of them have Robin's face on."

"How in hell did you… shit. You ought to change that letterbox, Strike. It keeps attracting wackos."

Strike wasn't in the mood for humor. "Why did you call me, then? Why tell me about the others?" Strike had trumped the Met thrice. Perhaps they now thought it advantageous to use him as an ally and not treat him as some sort of competition to upstage.

"Can't talk about it here." Strike could make out soft chatter and the steady drone of air conditioning through the line. Wardle was still at work. "Listen, can I drop by on the 11th? At, say, half two?"

Strike computed in his head and determined that the 11th was a Wednesday, the day he was set to tail Office Hours, a marketer for an insurance firm whose boss suspected him of creating bogus client calls after too many trips out of office without landing a contract. If the boss was right, then the marketer was, in all likelihood, a repeat offender. He would have to be caught squandering company resources on a different day. "Sure," he said.

Exhaustion overtook Strike when he hung up. A mere six months had passed and another killer cast their shadow over Robin. She would be the first to contradict him, but he felt responsible for it. He wouldn't commit the mistake of keeping any of it from her, however. He was painfully aware that his protectiveness for her had up to this point only served to invite greater danger.

He resigned himself to the conversation he would have with Robin and pictured the ensuing near-obsession both of them would nurse until the killer was caught, hopefully before more wrong-faced corpses turned up. In his mind, Strike forcibly expunged Robin's face from the three photographs and beckoned sleep, grudgingly acknowledging—to Robin's disapproval if she had known—that the move to New York may be in her best interests.