Thank you also to the multitude of experts and friends whose brains I picked on the subject of law, policing, crime scene processing, surveillance, and hacking. Neil Lancaster, Clare Mackintosh, Katie Robinson, Graham Bartlett, Sam Gordon, and HD Moore, I am more grateful than I can say to you for reading sections, giving advice on plausible (and implausible) scenarios, and generally allowing me to ask stupid questions without making me feel stupid. Needless to say, any mistakes and stretches of the imagination (plausible or otherwise) are my own. Thank you also to Derek for your invaluable help on the inner workings of insurance call centers, and I hope you enjoyed the shout-out to your namesake in the book. And as for Gytha, who told me, “I’m as swift as a fox. An old one. With osteoporosis. Run over by a 4x4. Ten days ago.” You know what this means and you owe me a drink next Bloody Scotland!
Thanks always to my brilliant agent, Eve, to Ludo, Steven, Rebecca, and everyone working on behalf of the EWLA to get my books out into the world. And heartfelt gratitude to the teams of people working tirelessly behind the scenes at Simon & Schuster in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, and at my publishers in other languages and abroad. To Alison, Jen, Suzanne, and Nita, thank you for your joint editorial brilliance and your belief in me as a writer. To Ian, Jonathan, Jessica, Sydney, Sabah, Katherine, Taylor, Adria, Natasha, Felicia, Kevin, Mackenzie, Gill, Dom, Nicholas, Hayley, Sarah, Harriett, Matt, Francesca, Jennifer, Aimee, Sally, Abby, Anabel, Caroline, Jaime, John Paul, Brigid, and Lisa—your care and brilliance never cease to amaze me, and I’m forever grateful for all the hard work you put into getting my books into the hands of readers.
To Paul James Hillman, thank you so much for your generous bid to help Young Lives vs Cancer. Your donation is supporting young people through some of the toughest times, and I am so grateful.
Thank you to my family for giving me reasons to emerge from my imaginary worlds, and making the real one so much fun.
Finally, to my readers—what else to say, apart from the fact that you make it all possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this far.
—Ruth