Winter removed the tea bag from his mug as the water turned the ideal color and placed it on the small dish Penelope had set on the coffee table. He’d have to be careful how he talked about her father. “This a typical night for you?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Every few nights, at least.”

  “Exhausting. Why do you go?”

  She smiled, eyes downcast. “Because it makes him happy.”

  For a moment, Winter pitied this girl. If circumstances were different, he could see himself being friends with her, talking about poetry and books and their favorite song lyrics, chatting over tea on her couch. Instead, he was about to implode her life, about to take down the father she worked so hard to please.

  “And do you just go through your life making sure your father is happy?” he asked her.

  She looked skeptically at him. “Don’t judge me,” she protested. “I saw that video of you partying at four in the morning in Ibiza.”

  He flashed her a grin. “I didn’t know you followed me that closely.”

  “I think I envy your life a little.”

  He laughed. “You’re the daughter of a billionaire. What about my life makes you even remotely jealous?”

  She gave him a meaningful look. “Do you honestly think I could be at a party in Ibiza at four in the morning without several of my father’s men watching me from some corner? Reporting back to him about what guy I might be dancing with or which friends I might be around?”

  At the mention of her father again, Winter watched her, looking for ways to dig out more information. “What’s wrong with a little protection? You’re not exactly an average girl.”

  She hesitated for a moment, her eyes going to the windows that looked out upon the Thames. From their position on the couch, Winter could see the lights of ships lazing up and down the black water.

  Finally, she turned back to him. “What was it like for you,” she asked, “when you first became famous?”

  Her question took him by surprise, and for a moment, he didn’t answer. A memory flashed through him of the chaotic weeks after the video of him first went viral, when an avalanche of reporters had clogged his phone. Terrified, he’d hung up on all of them—including Claire, until he saw her same number popping up over and over along with increasingly persuasive text messages.

  Please. Just let me have a single conversation with you.

  Just learned your full name is Winter Young. Is that true?

  Just one convo, Mr. Young. And I promise I’ll never bother you again.

  He finally relented. And she’d pitched herself so hard that he’d agreed reluctantly to a coffee date.

  “It was … a little overwhelming,” he now said to Penelope with a rueful smile. “I don’t know how I would’ve made it through without a good guide.”

  She smiled. “You mean your manager, don’t you? Claire?”

  He nodded. Claire had been a whirlwind, even back then, and she was about the same age that Artie would have been if he were still alive, which he found comforting. There was a nervous optimism about her that reminded him of himself, like something inside her was restless to get out into the world, like she had something to prove. He found himself wanting to be near her because of it, as if some of it might rub off on him if he stuck around long enough.

  What I do, Claire had told him during their first in-person meeting, is discover new talent. And I can tell you that no one I’ve ever seen has given off the kind of raw potential I saw you give off in that video.

  So? he’d said warily to her. What’s that supposed to mean?

  It means we’re going to discover you. She’d smiled gently at him. Picture who you are when no one else is around. Picture the version of yourself that makes you the happiest. That’s who we’re going to find.

  The memory faded, and Winter regarded Penelope again. “Why do you ask?”

  Penelope looked toward the window as she nursed her mug. “It must be nice,” she said after a while, “to remember a time before and a time after. To know you built something, from the ground.” She looked quickly at him. “I don’t mean to complain about my life. I know I grew up with a silver spoon.” Then she floundered a bit, as if trying to find the right words. “But sometimes I wonder … what it’s like to have lived purposefully, you know? If there’s any meaning to me being here. If I—anyone—deserve all this, just born to spend my life shuffling from one party to the next.”

  Meaning. And he understood her, knew that she must have spent her whole life thus far searching for purpose, what the point of everything was if she already had it all, why she deserved to live like this when so many others didn’t. Whether she had anything to give in return. They were the same thoughts that haunted him.

  “Maybe you just need to do a thankless good deed,” he said.

  She stared into her mug of cooling tea. “Maybe,” she echoed.

  Suddenly, it occurred to Winter that she hadn’t wanted to bring him back here for a fling or a casual chat. She thought he was a kindred spirit. She needed to talk to him because she felt alone, because she needed to commiserate with someone who she thought might understand her.

  A part of him felt annoyed at that. Poor little rich girl and her rich problems. He remembered hating people like this before he hit it big, that the only things that grieved them were things that the rest of the world could only wish they had.

  But this wasn’t all that grieved her. He could sense there was more, things she wasn’t telling him. He weighed for a moment the risk of bringing it up, then leaned slightly toward her. Gain her trust. Let her believe that her act has you fooled.

  “Is that why you’re seeing your accountant behind your father’s back?” he asked.

  Penelope blinked at him, as if caught like a deer in headlights. “I’m not seeing him,” she whispered. “Who told you that?”

  Winter laughed and held a hand up. “It’s okay. I’ve kept so many relationship secrets for friends that I don’t even register them anymore. So you’re safe with me.”

  She seemed to let out a breath, even though her eyes still looked startled. Then she laughed a little, too, and blushed into her mug. “Are we really that obvious?” she asked him ruefully.

  “Like a neon sign,” Winter replied with a smile. “I’m kidding—you were subtle. If I wasn’t so used to analyzing other celebrity couples, I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  She was silent for a long moment after that. Winter was wondering if he’d said too much when she finally sighed and looked back at him. “It’s nothing serious. Just a bit of fun for me. Connor’s nice.”

  Not nice enough, apparently, Winter thought, puzzling over her words. Why was she pretending to carry on an affair with someone she wasn’t actually seeing? What was fun about that? “He seems like it,” he said aloud instead.

  She smiled a little. “My mother would have liked him.”

  Her mother? Inwardly, Winter perked up. Sauda and Niall had told him that they knew almost nothing about Penelope’s mother, and here she was, mentioning the woman. “Would have?” Winter asked.

  “She died a while ago,” Penelope replied.

  The silence settled back in around them. There was real grief in her answer, remnants of what sounded like genuine love.

  “I’m sorry,” Winter murmured.

  She gave him a small smile at that, and Winter felt the trust build between them, the relaxing of Penelope’s shoulders that seemed to mean she was relieved to confide in him. The realization sent guilt coursing through him.

  “She would have liked to see me keep something that was just mine,” Penelope went on.

  “I’m sure she would have wanted you to have everything you desire,” Winter offered gently.

  “Do you have everything you desire?” she asked him.

  Sydney flashed through his mind again, her dark blue eyes and silvery dress and bare back. The thought of her in this moment surprised him, and the unexpected leap in his heart must have registered on his face, because Penelope tilted her head thoughtfully at him.

  “No,” he answered honestly.

  She looked back down into her mug. Her expression was soft and vulnerable now, and she looked even more fragile than he remembered from their first meeting.

  “Then I hope we both get what we really want,” she said.

  He put down his mug and faced her. “Look, I…” he started to say, searching for the right words.

  And then, in that moment of hesitation, he noticed her flinch slightly toward the window, as if she’d seen some kind of movement on the street. He glanced with her.

  There, he saw a dark figure standing on the other side of the street, crouched behind a stone gate.

  What caught his eye was the faintest glint of something metallic pointed in their direction. And suddenly, his mind raced back to the lessons he’d gotten with Sydney at Panacea’s training center.

  “Get down!”

  He flung himself at Penelope right before she could make a sound. Just as he barreled into her, he heard the shot crack through the glass window.

  It was the subtlest sound—such a small, quiet ping that he thought at first that he’d imagined it.

  Penelope didn’t make a sound. He immediately scrambled up—for a terrifying second, he thought that maybe the bullet had hit her after all. But then he saw her stir where she lay stricken on the couch, her eyes wide and skin ghost-white. At once, something seemed to come alive in her. She rolled to the floor, hitting the carpet at the same time he did.

  His eyes darted to a hole in the couch cushions, inches away from where they’d both been sitting. His gaze swung to the window, where a tiny, perfect circle was in the glass, where it had been drilled right through.

  For a moment, all he could do was let the reality sink in. That somebody wanted Penelope dead. That everything could seem to be going right one minute and then spiral completely out of his control the next.

  And he had the sense that their mission had just taken a turn out of his hands.

  21

  Pivot

  Not until Sydney managed to find her way back onto the streets of London did the force of everything hit her—the realization that Eli Morrison, the man they had been sent here to arrest, had just been murdered on board his own yacht.

  And even though she hadn’t been the one to kill him, she felt like his blood was staining her hands, that she had been the one to compromise their mission. She could still hear the sickening gurgle of his destroyed throat in her mind, see the recognition in his eyes as he stared wide-eyed at her.

  Worst of all, the possibility that Winter was in the line of fire right now.

  She’d sent him several subtle messages, asking him the time and where he was, when he’d be returning. Natural messages from a bodyguard.

  Nothing. No replies.

  His tracker had last pinged from Penelope’s home. So Sydney had rushed there, staking out a shadowed place in the bushes in the hopes she could make something out. But the apartment was dark now, as if Penelope had gone to bed. Or she wasn’t there at all.

  She texted him several more times as she raced back to the home she shared with him in Kensington. As she stepped through the front door, she kept one hand lightly on the handle of the gun tucked in her pocket.

  The house was dark, the bedrooms empty. Winter hadn’t returned here yet, either.

  After several attempts, she finally got a signal for his tracker again. It seemed to show he was moving through the streets of London in a car in the direction of the house.

  Sydney spent the next half hour pacing carefully through each room in the dark, her gun drawn, checking every door and closet and pantry. Then she made her way upstairs and scoured her bedroom before heading into Winter’s.

  The space was impeccably tidy, tidier than she would expect the bedroom of a pop star to be. The bed was perfectly made, his clothes put neatly away and folded as if on display at a department store. In the bathroom, his towel was folded over the shower door as if done by an attendant.

  On his dresser was a cup of water, a pen, and the notebook that she’d seen him scribbling in on the car ride from the airport. He hadn’t taken it with him to the concert and after-party.

  Sydney looked away from it and checked every corner of the room. When she was satisfied that no stranger had tampered with his things, she settled again on the notebook. Once again, she felt the urge to steal rise in her chest at the sight of something valuable. Besides, she knew she should check it—the notebook was exactly the kind of thing where someone would leave a tracker or listening device. She’d once discovered a chip half the size of her smallest nail taped to the back of a room service menu in one of her hotel rooms.

  Sydney picked up the notebook and opened it. The leather surface was soft with use, opened and closed a million times by his hands. She flipped through the first few pages.

  They contained hundreds of lines of text—fragments of sentences, floating words, bars of music she didn’t know how to read, and sketches. A branch bursting with leaves, a study of someone’s hand, a pretty alleyway drawn out with just a few lines. He wasn’t bad.

  As she turned to the last page, she stopped on the final lines of some lyrics he had written down.

  I look at you and it all fills my head

  this swirl of (every) thought

  (every) nightmare (every) dread

  Do you ever feel scared like I do

  Ever hate yourself like I do

  Ever destroy yourself for someone else?

  Do you ever feel guilty for everyone’s mistakes?

  Ever wish you could take someone else’s place?

  Do you ever feel like dying?

  Do you ever want to live forever?

  And this hurricane goes on and on

  Every time I look at you

  You are my meditation

  Am I ever yours, too?

  Winter had written this recently, probably even last night, after she’d seen him dancing alone downstairs. She found herself rereading the words and storing them in her mind, enjoying the way they sounded, wondering idly who had inspired them.

  Then she blinked and closed the book. She was getting distracted. Her fingers ran along the inner binding of the notebook, then across the inside and outside of its jacket. No trace of tampering, at least.

  She had just put the notebook back when she heard the front door downstairs open and shut.

  Every muscle in her froze at the sound of the soft click. Winter? Or was it Eli’s men? Or the men who had killed Eli? She moved on silent feet into her bedroom, settling in a corner and facing the door.

  There, she cocked her gun at the door and waited. The dark stillness of the apartment threatened to overwhelm her.

  At last she heard slow, cautious steps heading up the stairs. Whoever it was moved quietly. The only sound that gave them away was the faint creak of a weak step.

  The bedroom door swung slowly open toward her. She hoisted her gun from her corner. The figure emerged.

  Winter.

  He was wielding an umbrella like a weapon—and at her movement, he swung in her direction. She shifted her weight instinctively to one side. Then his eyes widened as he recognized her. His hand dropped, and he leaned heavily against the door frame.

  “Holy hell,” he snapped at her, throwing his umbrella down. He looked terrifyingly pale. “I could have killed you.”

  Relief flooded through her at the sight of him, then embarrassment as tears stung her eyes. She hadn’t realized how afraid she was of him getting killed. Of potentially being the one to find him dead. “Not with that thing, you couldn’t,” she replied instead, sheathing her gun with a flourish. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded wearily. There was a gloss of fear in his eyes, and with a start, she realized he’d been afraid for her. “Something happened to you,” he said.

  She stared at him. “And to you.”

  He hesitated, then said in a low, hoarse voice, “A sniper tried to kill Penelope. Shot straight through the glass of her apartment window. She’s with Connor now, at his place.”

  Sydney felt her throat constrict at his words. And what do you think I can do to your loved ones? The sense of spiraling hit her again, and she fought to keep calm. She reached Winter and immediately started scanning him for any sign of injuries. Her fingers brushed the skin of his arm. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head. His eyes stayed steadily on hers, searching for the secrets behind her haunted expression. “No. You?”

  There was a heavy pause. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Eli Morrison is dead.”

  For a moment, all they could do was stare at each other.

  Their mission was over. Now they were embroiled in something new, something for which they had no plans.

  “Sauda and Niall wanted a call as soon as you returned,” Sydney whispered in the silence. “Glad you made it.”

  They locked the door and checked the shades on the window. Then they settled in the middle of the floor. Sydney pulled out a small lens, then snapped it into place on her phone’s camera and placed the phone carefully on the carpet between them. She tapped out a few instructions on it.

  A muted animation appeared between them, showing a loading circle around a green phone. Seconds later, the animation disappeared to make way for Sauda’s bust hovering in midair as a hologram, her brows knotted with worry. Beside her appeared Niall, who scooted forward at the sight of them.

  Sauda’s eyes found Sydney’s immediately. Although she said nothing, Sydney could tell that she was searching for signs of injury. Then the woman said, “What happened?”

  Her tone was crisp and cold, a voice that Sydney knew well. “I tailed Eli Morrison and three of his associates down to Teddington Lock tonight,” she replied. “They dragged Eli on board one of his yachts. The Invictus. I couldn’t catch their entire conversation, but what I did catch was spoken in Corcasian.” She shook her head. “Here.”

  She tapped something else on her phone. As Sauda and Niall looked on, a file began to play, filling the air around them with the darkness of a foggy night and lapping water, of angry murmurs overhead. Winter sucked in his breath as the video played out, as the Paramecium cube appeared and Sydney made her move, as the guard then hit Eli and the man died choking on the chemical weapon.