She checked the mirrors in the bathrooms, pretending she was cleaning the glass while running a finger idly along the surface, making sure they weren’t one-way or contained extra panels that might be recording anything. A gap between her finger and its reflection meant a safe mirror—no gap meant something was up.

  The bathrooms cleared her tests.

  As she stepped out of the final bedroom to head down the stairs, she saw Winter heading up in her direction, his dark eyes following her curiously. His dancer grace was perfect for their mission, but it bothered her that he could move so quietly that even she hadn’t heard him approaching.

  “Awed by this place, too, huh?” he said with a small smile.

  She knew by the look in his eyes what he was really asking her. Did you find anything unusual?

  She gave him a pointed shake of her head. “Nothing too surprising,” she answered.

  By that, she meant Be careful how you act in here. We’re being watched.

  He noted her gesture, but just waved a hand in agreement. “Well, I certainly don’t have a heated indoor pool in my living room,” he said, glancing down at the bottom floor.

  Sydney knew this was an opportunity for her to turn their charm together up within earshot of the house’s bugs, to lean into Eli’s assumption about them. She walked down the stairs until she was just a single step higher than him.

  “Then we’d better make good use of it,” she said coyly.

  Winter frowned. Then he leaned closer so that he could murmur in her ear. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered.

  She caught the scent of him—clean laundry, shampoo, and the delicate musk of a boy. He was very warm when he stood this near to her. She smiled a little to herself. Flirting was a course she’d aced during training.

  “What do you mean?” she replied, resting a hand lightly on his arm, as if to steady herself. “You don’t want to use the pool? Oh, come on.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow at her.

  “Fine.” She sniffed. “I’ll use it by myself. But just so you know,” she added, looking sidelong at him, “I didn’t pack a swimsuit.”

  It gave her a thrilling jolt of satisfaction to see his breath hitch for a second, his pupils dilating. At least he wasn’t immune to her flirtations.

  Then realization seemed to dawn on him. A small smile appeared on his lips. He leaned against the side of the stairs, his hands in his pockets, and regarded her like a challenge.

  “That sounded a little like a dare, Miss Miller,” he said.

  “Oh?” she answered. “And what do you think I’m daring you to do?”

  He leaned forward so that his arm brushed against hers. “You tell me. Entertain you in the pool?”

  Her skin tingled at his touch. “Something you’re experienced at?”

  “Well, it is my job to make people happy.”

  “And are your customers satisfied?”

  He looked straight at her. “I’m very, very good at my job.”

  His voice was just soft enough to seem like it was meant for her alone to hear. And in spite of their little game, she found herself hesitating for a heartbeat.

  The pause in her reply couldn’t have been longer than a fraction of a second—but Winter caught it. He laughed, a small, bright sound at the base of his throat. There was a satisfied glimmer in his eye, as if he’d won, and annoyance flared in Sydney’s chest.

  Oh no, you don’t.

  Without warning, she leaned up to his ear so that her lips brushed his skin. She felt him shiver a little. “Speak up,” she whispered. “We’re putting on a show, remember?”

  His smug look wavered, making way for a pout. He turned his head to whisper back, “You’re no fun at all.”

  Insufferable. Sydney’s heart was still beating rapidly. She hoped he couldn’t sense it. “Believe me,” she murmured coolly, with her cheek near his, “I’d rather be stuck flirting with a tree.”

  He lifted a taunting eyebrow at her. “Now, I know that’s a lie.”

  It was. But the last thing Sydney wanted to do was let him win this flirting game, so she pulled all the way back and gave him a tight smile. “A tree wouldn’t be so irritating,” she retorted in a hushed voice.

  His smile turned into a grin. “Too bad,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear. “I was having a good time.”

  He whispered it so casually that he could have just been commenting on the rain outside. I was having a good time.

  He was doing well staying in character. No surprise there, of course. He was a star, after all, someone who probably flirted every single day of his life. Or was he mocking her ability to be an effective spy? Unless he really meant—

  Then he pulled back, his eyes darting away from her in seeming disinterest.

  Of course he was just mocking her, still under cover, and more successful at it than Sydney could have hoped. She wanted to hit herself for being pulled into their routine.

  She composed herself in an instant and let her voice turn professional again. “Any errands you want me to run, Mr. Young?”

  He stepped to the other side of the staircase, then walked past her. “Just the postcard for my mom,” he said.

  “Don’t fall asleep until I’m back,” she called over her shoulder. “You’ll make your jetlag worse.”

  “And a latte, too, then,” he called back. “Thanks.”

  It was a rehearsed question-and-answer between them upon arrival: a way for Winter to send Sydney out of the house to meet a local asset working with Panacea, who would then deliver her a parcel containing items they needed.

  Winter headed up the stairs and toward his bedroom. Sydney turned around, refusing to look back to see if he would do the same. Then she went down the stairs and out the front door. A good stairway exchange right out in the open. If someone on Morrison’s team really was watching them, it should have looked like just a genuine, supposedly secret moment between a star and his bodyguard flirting casually with each other, trying to keep up a hot, hidden affair. Frivolous celebrity behavior.

  The night was cold, the drizzle still going. The chill in the air helped clear her head. It wasn’t that she’d never flirted while undercover with an agent—Sydney had messed around on the job before. She just hadn’t expected this particular agent to have an effect on her.

  Too bad. I was having a good time.

  She could still feel the sear of his dark eyes on her as he said it, see the intensity of that look. Just mocking her, she reminded herself. And why did she care anyway? Not that she did.

  Scowling deeper, she wrenched her thoughts away from Winter and shoved a Necco Wafer in her mouth, sucking on the candy to distract herself.

  She walked in the direction of the café several blocks down, strolling leisurely enough to file away the world around her. A butcher shop, a wine shop, a dental clinic, a grocery store the size of a postage stamp. Baskets of bright oranges and apples laid out under an awning. The smell of chocolate and butter wafting from a French patisserie, then the scent of coriander and cumin from an Indian café. Petals strewn on the path under a pub’s hanging baskets of flowers. Cuts of bologna and sausage suspended in a window. People bustling up from and down to an Underground station, their boots splashing through shallow puddles, their voices a mix of half a dozen different languages.

  She paid particular attention to them—older women with exercise gear on underneath their winter coats, a rowdy bunch of football fans wearing Chelsea FC shirts, businessmen rushing along with briefcases held over their heads, tourists wheeling suitcases and squinting at maps on their phones, teenagers laughing together while huddled under transparent umbrellas, some of them still in their school uniforms. Then she turned the corner and watched for the same people to potentially reappear. If she saw the same rushing businessman on a different street in the opposite direction fifteen minutes later, they might be tailing her.

  Finally, she ducked into a Caffè Nero shop. There, she picked up a latte for Winter and one for herself, careful to tap a specific credit card to pay. When the Panacea agent assigned to do her drop got the notification on their phone that the card’s balance had changed, they would recognize it as Sydney’s signal that she was successfully on her way to their rendezvous point.

  As she turned toward the exit, she texted Winter.

  Eta 20m

  He texted back almost immediately. Hurry. Pining for you.

  She almost laughed out loud at his deadpan, not sure whether to be exasperated or amused.

  dsu, she replied.

  What?

  It stood for Don’t stay up, but she didn’t bother explaining it as she headed out the door and toward the post office. As she went, he texted again.

  Have you ever texted in complete words?

  Nt, she answered.

  This one stood for No time, but now she was just messing with him. She imagined his eye roll, smiled a little, then tucked her phone back into her pocket and focused on the street.

  Her phone told her it would be a ten-minute walk—enough time for the asset to have checked her availability and dropped what she needed at the location.

  This post office’s particular mail drops had been her pitch to Sauda for a secure site, too. It was a boring spot, one she’d had checked to ensure no street cams or surveillance was covering, a spot with relatively low traffic in the city, and most importantly, was possible to get to at all hours. If all went well, she would drop Winter’s postcard into the mailbox and see a small package secured for her underneath the mailbox, waiting for pickup.

  Then she’d use a Necco Wafer—her secret substitute for chalk—from her pocket to mark the bottom of the mailbox to announce a successful retrieval to her asset whenever they checked it out later.

  She grinned at the memory of Niall putting a roll of the candy on her desk during her first official training day at Panacea.

  “For you, kid,” he’d said to Sydney in his trademark grumble. “Always keep one in your pocket. You never know when you might need it.”

  Sydney had pocketed it immediately. Only then did she realize that no one had ever bought candy for her before. “Yes, sir,” she’d answered.

  The memory faded. Soon the rain picked up, turning from drizzle into a steady downpour. By the time she arrived at the shuttered post office, a loud symphony was pelting her umbrella. Under the deluge stood a row of cylindrical red mailboxes, dewy under the streetlight, their round sides emblazoned with royal crests.

  Right away, she realized something had gone wrong.

  The mailbox that they were supposed to use, the last in the line, had no subtle chalk marking on the drop slot. It meant that the asset never arrived. That there was no thin package secured inside the mailbox’s slot for her to pick up.

  It meant that the drop had been aborted, likely because of someone watching them.

  Always assume you’re being followed, Sauda told her every chance she got.

  So she did assume, and didn’t turn back around. She didn’t look concerned. Instead, she just headed to the mailbox and unceremoniously dropped in Winter’s postcard. As she did, she scanned the streets from the corners of her eyes.

  There. She saw what must have tipped off her asset.

  A black car on the other side of the street, with a silhouette sitting inside of it, facing her direction.

  Sydney didn’t look again. But the single glance told her enough. Someone was watching her, after all.

  Inwardly, she cursed. Drop aborted. They would have to try again within the next twenty-four hours, before Winter’s concert began. But at least this little failed trip told her without a doubt that Eli Morrison was watching her movements. He’d probably have eyes on dozens of people in the city over the next few days.

  Her goal was to make herself look as boring as possible. A bodyguard, nothing more.

  She turned away from the mailbox without a second look and adjusted the two coffees in her hands. Then she turned to head back to the house.

  Only now did the full enormity of their mission settle in. Eli Morrison was no fool. He was a man who indulged in brutality. If they were caught, she knew there was nothing Sauda and Niall would—or could—do to save them. That was part of this gig, after all.

  London would be an interesting place to die. Would it happen here?

  Sydney had never been afraid of death, simply because she didn’t think dead people felt anything. But dying? A different matter entirely. She’d experienced that moment many times before, whether during a mission where she’d escaped by a hairsbreadth or when she was still a child trapped in a home she hated. So this was a familiar question to her, something that appeared in her mind at the start of every mission.

  Where would she die? Would it be here?

  She didn’t know the answer, of course—only that when it did happen, she would be alone somewhere, with no one to rescue her but herself. That realization had been with her all her life. Maybe that was why she’d fallen so easily into this line of work. Everyone died alone. Her mother had, after all.

  The thought reminded her of her lungs, and as if on cue, a spasm of pain rippled uncomfortably through her chest.

  She sucked in her breath instinctively, then let the air out in a slow exercise and quickened her walk. Like hell she was going to die here, her last mission being stuck with an annoying superstar.

  And with that thought lodged firmly in her mind, she hurried down the street, not bothering to wonder whether anyone else was watching her.

  12

  Suspicions

  The indoor pool in Winter’s house was cool and soothing, the sound of its lapping blending with the patter of rain against the windows and the steady rhythm of nearby voices. Winter lay back in the water and stared at the staircase curling up to the top floor. Several feet away, Leo and Dameon lounged on the couches, picking at a pile of chocolate bars that Claire had dropped off for them.

  “We won’t see you because there won’t be a break,” Leo told Winter now as he peeled off the wrapper to a Cadbury Twirl. “Claire said you’ll go straight from the concert to the after-party as Penelope’s guest of honor.”

  “Where are you headed?” Winter said to them.

  “The clubs,” Dameon answered with a shrug. “So don’t get into trouble.”

  “I never get into trouble,” Winter protested.

  “He means, don’t get into trouble without us,” Leo clarified with a grin.

  Now that evening had settled into the corners of the house, the space seemed more sinister than elegant. Winter thought he could see shadows flickering in his peripheral vision, shapes in the silhouettes of trees out in the garden that swayed in the breeze. Now and then came the low rumble of distant thunder. The uneasy electricity in the air suited his mood, and he found himself composing melodies in his head to match the energy, as if trying to distract himself from his real reason for being here.

  “Did Claire say if she’s allowed inside the party?” Winter asked.

  “She’s not, either,” Dameon replied. “Just you and Ashley.”

  Winter already knew this, although he also knew they’d expect him to ask. He sat up in the water and leaned his arms against the edge of the pool. “Great,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry.” Dameon smiled, adjusting the large bun of dreadlocks secured high on his head. “You’ll feel like Claire’s there even if she’s not.”

  As if on cue, Winter’s phone pinged against the pool’s ledge, and the screen lit up to show a long message from Claire.

  Confirmed your car for tomorrow night! It’ll be waiting right outside the main entrance, not the side. So brace yourself for a crowd. If you leave in anything other than that car, with anyone I don’t know, don’t forget to TELL ME, do you understand? No answer means yes!

  He wondered what Claire would think of Sydney’s three-to-five-letter texts.

  “Besides,” Leo said. “I think we agreed that you like Ashley’s company more than you care to admit.”

  Dameon glanced around. “Where is she, anyway?”

  Remember the house is watching, Winter told himself. “I sent her to deliver some mail for me,” he said.

  Dameon raised an eyebrow. “You sent your bodyguard away?”

  Winter felt the prickles of his friend’s suspicions. “I’ll be fine,” Winter said with a yawn, gesturing around him. “Eli Morrison’s got his own guards watching the street, and this house is armed to the teeth with alarms. Besides, she’ll be back soon.”

  Dameon regarded him. “You’re worried,” he said.

  “I’m not,” Winter mumbled to the air.

  Dameon crossed his arms. “I know when you’re lying.”

  Winter swiveled his gaze away, afraid they would see the truth in his eyes. Bringing the people who knew him best might not have been a good idea.

  “Pre-concert nerves,” he answered.

  “Nothing you haven’t handled before,” Dameon said. His gaze was penetrating.

  “Well, it sounds like a pretty high-profile guest list.”

  Leo was staring at Winter with a thoughtful expression, too, his usual cheery grin sobering. “Leave him alone,” he suddenly said. He nudged Dameon and pulled his legs up into a cross on the couch. “He’ll be fine. You remember our first stadium concert, right?”

  Dameon’s questioning gaze swiveled away. “LA?” he said.

  Leo nodded. “We were all terrified. But Winter pulled it off without blinking an eye.”

  Winter did remember—and Leo wasn’t really telling the truth.

  It’d happened two years after that fateful fan video of him went viral and he’d been catapulted into stardom. At the time, he could feel the momentum gathering behind that first huge concert, could feel himself pushing at the seams of increasing headlines and sales numbers and records and interviews. The disorienting feeling that he was about to launch so quickly that there would be no ground upon which to steady himself. So ten minutes before showtime, Winter had finally lost his nerve and gone to hide in a closet. Leo had been the one to find him. He could still remember his friend peeking hesitantly through a sliver in the door, then coming inside to sit beside him without a word.