She edged silently through the fog toward the sound, and as she drew near, a yacht materialized in the darkness, bobbing easily against the river’s gentle current, its lights turned suspiciously down. Against the few lights on inside the boat, she could make out four silhouettes.

  Her eyes darted to the name of the boat. Invictus. One of the yachts that Eli owned.

  Sydney crept closer until she reached the beginning of the pier, then swung her legs over the side of the wall to the grass and dirt along the riverbank. The shadows under the pier stretched long here, and she melted into them, her figure lost in the fog. As the ground sloped into the water, she hopped up into the wooden scaffolding underneath the pier, balancing along the beams until she had reached the end of the pier where the yacht was docked. There, in the safety of the shadows, she stopped at a vantage point where she could glimpse some of the commotion on the deck.

  She hit the Record button on her phone and her earring studs activated.

  “Wake him up.”

  A stranger’s voice drifted to her through the fog. Sydney picked up the slightest hint of a Corcasian accent, and saw one of the men nodding at the other.

  There was a slight shuffle, followed by the sound of a hand slapping a face. Sydney shifted to the other side underneath the pier for a better view. There, she finally caught sight of the prisoner.

  It was Eli Morrison.

  Every hair stood up on the back of Sydney’s neck. He was the prisoner.

  Eli’s head lolled listlessly to one side.

  “Can he talk at all?” the first stranger said.

  “Not yet,” said another, crossing his arms. “Too strong of a shot in the car, I think.”

  There was some more mumbling, followed by the first stranger’s voice again. “How about now?”

  Another groan. Then a confused mumble that quickly turned angry.

  “Get your goddamn hands off me before I order them cut off.”

  “I’m afraid you no longer give the orders, sir.”

  Gone was the charismatic, falsely generous façade she’d met when they first arrived in London. Eli sounded murderous with rage, like the one who could watch a family be tortured, who could order the beheading of an enemy.

  Why had he been kidnapped and brought here?

  “I had a sample of your shipment brought to us,” the first stranger now said. He accepted a small metal cylinder from one of his companions, then walked over to Eli and opened its top.

  Sydney craned her neck as he took out the contents.

  Then she held her breath. It was a small, translucent object that looked like an ice cube. Even in the darkness, she could tell that it gave off the faintest blue glow. The man held it gingerly—now she saw that he was wearing a heavy set of gloves.

  A warning began to buzz in her mind. This had to be a sample of Paramecium, the chemical weapon that Eli Morrison was shipping to South Africa.

  The stranger turned it in his palm. “It looks good,” he mused in approval. “Your men tell me the ship is fully loaded and ready to be on its way.”

  “After tonight, I doubt you’ll be getting your shipment.” Eli’s voice had turned low, menacing in its calm.

  A sigh. “I’m afraid you’re unaware of what’s happening here.”

  Eli’s reply sent a chill down Sydney’s spine. “No one breaks a contract with me.”

  “No, Mr. Morrison. I don’t think you understand.” There was no hint of fear in the other man’s voice. “There is nothing to negotiate, because you still owe us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “According to our accounts, you are short in your deliveries. We’ve paid you in full for the past shipment, and yet what we received didn’t quite add up to what we ordered.”

  “You’re lying or a fool. Count again and release me.”

  The man ignored him. Sydney trembled at the realization that someone could feel so unthreatened by a man like Eli. “We don’t appreciate being conned—certainly not by one who thinks we wouldn’t notice years of it.”

  There was no immediate answer this time.

  “I have the power to kill you and everyone you love,” Eli went on. His voice was still quiet and full of menace, but this time she could hear a note of urgency in it. Of fear. “So think carefully about what you do next.”

  “And what do you think I can do to your loved ones?” The other man’s voice dropped.

  The first stranger nodded subtly. His two associates walked over to Eli and restrained him, one of them gripping the man’s jaw firmly. As Sydney looked on, the first stranger took the pale blue cube and forced it into Eli’s mouth. Before Eli could wrench away, the stranger sealed Eli’s mouth completely shut with a wide strip of tape.

  Sydney licked her lips and trembled, forcing her breathing to stay calm and measured. They were going to kill him.

  I can’t let them kill him, she thought immediately. Panacea needed Eli Morrison alive—his death would derail their entire mission, would engulf his network of people, would prevent Panacea from accessing what they needed to access in order to get a warrant for seizing his cargo.

  Sydney straightened from her crouch and pulled herself up onto the pier, then stole into the shadows of the ship near the ladder against the hull.

  Up on the deck, she heard two of the men arguing in Corcasian. Sydney knew enough of the language to get by, had been beefing up on it right before the mission. Now the words filtered through her ears, and she felt the vast library of languages in her head shift.

  “The call’s for you,” one said.

  “Not now,” the other growled.

  “It’s urgent. They want to us to clear out by two and need to know how much longer we’ll be.”

  They. Who were they? Or was she misunderstanding the language’s pronouns? Sydney listened for clues as they continued muttering to each other in Corcasian, but no one clarified any further.

  There was a pause in their argument, broken only by the sound of Eli’s muffled grunts as he tried not to bite down on the lethal cube in his mouth. Sydney made her way soundlessly up the ladder until she was almost level with the ship’s railing.

  From here, she could see the back of Eli’s head. She pressed herself as flat against the side of the ship as she could.

  “Come with me,” the man in charge finally said, waving for his associate to follow him. The other man fell into step without hesitation, leaving the third alone to guard Eli.

  Sydney waited until the men’s footsteps had faded around the corner of the deck. Then she pulled herself silently over the railing and landed with a soft thud behind the third guard. In the same move, she pulled a knife from her boot and flipped it around in her hand so that she wielded the hilt.

  He barely had time to turn before Sydney lashed out at him, slamming the hilt into the back of his knee. His leg buckled—as he stumbled, she struck him viciously in the back of his neck. The man collapsed onto all fours. Sydney moved to hit him again, to knock him unconscious—but to her surprise, he didn’t dart toward her. He went for Eli.

  She lunged after him. But he ignored her, then reached Eli and swung a fist hard at the man’s jaw. It connected with a loud crack.

  No!

  Sydney had to stifle the scream in her throat. She threw herself forward at the guard, tackling him in the side and sending him toppling to the floor. They both scrambled for an instant before Sydney smashed the hilt of her knife against the man’s temple. He finally went limp.

  Sydney hopped to her feet and hurried to Eli—

  But it was too late.

  Eli was foaming at the mouth, bloody bubbles dripping from the edges of the duct tape. Sydney’s hand stopped in midair as she thought better of ripping the tape off—Eli suddenly surged up, as if trying to escape the chair he was bound to, his limbs pulling in a desperate attempt to get the shattered Paramecium out. A strangled sob came from his throat.

  The sob changed halfway to an uncontrollable cough.

  As Sydney looked on in horror, his body contorted backward and his boots scraped frantically against the deck. She took two steps back.

  The sound of his muffled grunts changed, turned gurgling. She knew right away that the chemical must be dissolving his throat.

  Eli met her eyes once. They were bloodshot and tinged with tears, open so wide that she thought his eyeballs might pop right out. She stared back at him. He recognized her—she could see that in their dying glaze. He looked like he wanted to say something.

  Then his gaze clouded over, and he went limp against the chair, foam still dripping down his chin.

  Sydney had witnessed plenty of deaths in the two years since she started working for Panacea, had enough nightmares of what she’d seen to last her lifetime. She knew how almost every kind of death sounded—a sigh from a shot, a gasp from a slash to the throat, the thrashing of dying limbs, the crumple of a body slumping.

  But this. This was death by a new chemical weapon.

  The billionaire tycoon behind one of the biggest trafficking operations in the world. The mogul who owned museums and yachts and sprawling estates. The man that Panacea had focused their attention on for years. The entire reason why Sydney and Winter were here in London.

  He was now dead.

  “Shit,” Sydney whispered to herself. “Shit, shit!”

  Paramecium. She didn’t want to imagine what the chemical had done when it’d broken inside Eli’s mouth, didn’t want to think about what that little blue cube could do once it was loaded back inside its metal cylinder and launched within a city’s center by the thousands. There had been a part of her that could believe—until she saw the weapon at work—the shipment was a myth, that maybe it wasn’t real at all, that they were just here to find a ledger of numbers.

  Well, she’d seen it now.

  The cold air swirled against her, and she shivered. Her hand went to her back pocket. When she’d attacked the man, she had managed to swipe his wallet out of his pants and tuck it into her own. She wanted to flip the wallet open now and take a glimpse at who these assailants were, but there was no time. She had to get out of here.

  Instead, with a last look at Eli, she hurried to the deck’s railing and swung back over the edge. Her hands shook.

  Eli Morrison is dead.

  And so was their mission.

  And in that moment, she froze against the hull’s ladder. Cutting through her memory of Eli’s dying rasps was the last thing the Corcasian ringleader said.

  And what do you think I can do to your loved ones?

  Eli’s loved ones.

  Her thoughts snapped into place.

  Penelope. She might be next on their hit list. The realization sent a flood of horror through Sydney’s veins.

  “Winter,” she gasped.

  20

  Birds from the Same Cage

  Penelope Morrison’s entire demeanor changed again the instant she exited the Alexandra Palace and slid into the car that drove them away. She sank into the seat; her muscles relaxed. Winter watched her from the corner of his eye as he pretended to enjoy the passing views of London at night. Up until now, he’d seen the version of her that was an anxious, blushing fan, the rich socialite, the birthday girl.

  But the Penelope that now leaned her head back against her headrest with a sigh was a girl that just seemed … tired.

  “Back to my flat, please,” she said to the driver. Even her voice seemed to drop a few notes down to a new normal. The man nodded without a word and pulled away.

  “Do you think they’ll miss me there?” she said to Winter as they went.

  She was clearly hoping for a compliment, so Winter gave it to her. “It’s your birthday,” he replied, giving her a conspiratorial wink. “Anyone who doesn’t should be kicked out immediately.”

  She laughed and looked out the window. “What should I tell them?”

  “That you skipped out with me?” Winter suggested.

  Her laugh turned into a giggle. When she glanced out the window a second time, she looked back at him with wide eyes. “I saw a couple of photographers at that street corner!” she gasped. “They snapped us, didn’t they?”

  His smile turned mischievous. “I apologize in advance, because you’re about to get some very salacious tabloid headlines.”

  She laughed again, shoving him teasingly, and then bit her lip.

  Winter shuffled his boots slightly against the floor of the car. He didn’t know how far he wanted to take this. And for some reason, he kept imagining Sydney sitting in Penelope’s place instead, playing their own little game of teasing each other as they had done back at their house. He imagined Sydney’s blue eyes flashing in the darkness of this car, her blond bob whipping around as she smiled at him.

  What was Sydney doing right now? Was she somehow following them? Was she waiting back at the house, writing up a report for Sauda with a scowl on her face?

  The pen that Sydney had given him sat heavily in his pocket. He didn’t dare fiddle with it, but the weight of it there reminded him that he wasn’t entirely alone. Sydney was still here, in a way, watching for danger.

  After a while, they reached a quiet street in Holland Park, where they pulled up in front of a building draped heavily with ivy.

  He made a noise of appreciation. “Nice place.”

  She sidled out of the car and nodded at him. “Come on in.”

  They headed inside and toward an elevator at the back of the lobby. When they reached the top floor, they stepped out into a corridor made of glass on either side. Through it, he could see a pretty nightscape of trees silhouetted against rows of chimneyed roofs, all of it outlined beneath the light of a half moon.

  “Now, that’s a view,” he told her.

  She smiled at him over her shoulder before unlocking her door and leading them in.

  The space didn’t look like it belonged to a young heiress. Glass boxes lined the walls, each of them containing what looked like a classic edition of a book, and in the center of the room was an enormous screen surrounded by various gaming consoles and plush couches. It looked less like an heiress’s home and more like a studio.

  As Penelope removed her sun-and-moon hairpiece with a relieved sigh and unclipped the bejeweled pin from her hair, Winter walked over to one of the books carefully lit from within a glass case. “Is that a Shakespeare First Folio?” he said, glancing at her before returning to admire the book. He let out a whistle. “You have even more expensive taste than your accountant.”

  Penelope put down her hairpin on the coffee table and smiled in surprise at him. “You actually recognize the first folio?”

  He shrugged. “Any good musician ought to have respect for the written word,” he said with a smile. “And Shakespeare wasn’t bad.”

  “What’s your favorite, then?” she said.

  “The Merchant of Venice,” he replied automatically.

  She must have meant the question as some sort of test, because she looked at him with new awe. “And what’s your favorite line?”

  He hummed under his breath before answering. “The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”

  She leaned her head against the wall of the kitchen entryway, her smile softer now as she regarded him. “I wouldn’t have guessed that,” she said.

  “That so?” He straightened and gave her a teasing lift of his chin. “What would you have guessed, then?”

  “Be not afraid of greatness,” she replied, then turned her eyes down shyly.

  He laughed. “How much of a narcissist would I have to be to pick that for myself?”

  “It’s not so bad!” she said before turning back around and heading to the kitchen. “Tea?”

  “Sure, thanks. But only if it’s herbal. And you don’t have to steep it yet. Just give me the tea bag—I’ll do it myself.”

  He heard her laugh from the kitchen. “Particular, are you? No worries.”

  As she heated up a kettle, Winter sank down onto one of her couches. Her place was quirky but cozy, the kind of space that Claire would approve of. He could see her throwing her head back against the couch and letting herself unwind.

  Claire was going to try calling him soon, he was sure of it. He was starting to get used to keeping her out of the loop, and it made him uneasy.

  His eyes fell to the hairpin that Penelope had tossed onto the coffee table. You’re wearing it, Connor had said to her when he’d spotted it in her hair at the party. Maybe it had been a gift from him to her.

  Winter stared at it a moment longer. If Sydney were here, he knew she’d swipe it, tuck it smoothly into her pocket and act like nothing had happened.

  Not that he was Sydney, or a thief. But his gaze lingered on it, along with his recent realization of the mysterious relationship that Penelope had with her accountant. Maybe the pin was nothing—or maybe it was a useful clue into whatever existed between Connor and Penelope.

  And maybe being around Sydney was rubbing off on him in the worst ways. Before Winter could think harder on it, he found himself taking the hairpin and sliding it neatly into his pocket, then leaning back on the couch.

  A minute later, Penelope came back to him and handed him a steaming mug. “Hope you don’t mind chamomile,” she said, nodding to the unopened tea bag she handed him.

  “Almost as good as jasmine.” Winter ripped the paper and took the bag out, then sank it into the hot water. On the other end of the couch, Penelope cradled her own mug carefully and folded her legs up onto the seat. Her hair was pulled over her shoulder in a fat fishtail of a braid, and as she sat, her free hand came up to idly toy with the end of it.

  Maybe Penelope was hoping he’d make some sort of move on her. Maybe she just wanted to talk. Her body was angled toward him, but curled up tightly in a way that shielded her. If Sydney were here, Winter knew she would probably have some kind of analysis on what her posture meant.

  If Sydney were here, if Sydney were here—why did she keep entering his thoughts?

  “I prefer hanging here,” she said after an awkward pause. “I can only stand being at so many of my dad’s parties.”