The prologue’s narrator says she sometimes dreams of going inside Whitethorn House. The house is empty save one lady with a key. Familiar sights and smells fill the rooms. There is a piano, and the table is set for a meal for five people. Daniel’s cigarette case is on the dusty table. The narrator hears a sound and follows it from room to room. She hears a giggle upstairs, but when she comes to the top of the staircase, all she sees in the mirror is herself laughing.

Cassie Maddox is telling Lexie Madison’s story, not her own, though she says they are intricately linked. She flashes back to when she and her boss Frank Mackey created the identity of Alexandra “Lexie” Madison for Cassie to use in an undercover operation to infiltrate a college drug ring. Cassie and Frank used a mix of fiction and parts of Cassie’s own life to create the fake identity. Cassie is 26, with a background in psychology, fresh out of the training college, and eager to get into the field. When Cassie and Frank finished creating her undercover identity, they toasted with spiked coffee.