She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long
gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone.
Lore Van de Oest had been the daughter of one of the world's most
powerful families...and now she was nobody, and she had to hide. Then
out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in,
cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and
again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and
not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had
escaped...but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception,
and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she
loathed. Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with
Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner
and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity
of a dead woman, taking over her life, and inventing her future. But to
start again, Lore required Spanner's talents - Spanner, who needed her
and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to
play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the
price of being a Van de Oest to be paid.
