Claire gave him a rare, pitying look. He knew that could only mean one thing.

  “We’ll talk about it later. This is an invasion of privacy on a gross scale. We’ll sue everyone for all they’re worth, and we’ll win. Evelyn. The publisher. The author, whoever it is.”

  Winter nodded numbly without believing her, felt his heart sink as the car pulled away. So, the book news was true. He hated to admit it, but all he could think about was the only suspect: his mother. And the possibility that she might have, once again, but as always, wounded him deeply. Likely without even realizing it.

  Because it didn’t matter that millions of people around the world knew Winter’s name, that they followed his every move, that they said they loved him. No one did so for free. To everyone, even his own mother, he wasn’t a real person—just a product to be used.

  And products were easily discarded.

  * * *

  Getting back to his hotel felt like an eternal voyage. The crowd along the beach had been roused into a frenzy at his sudden departure, fans intermixed with paparazzi all crowding around the car, their questions muffled by the window glass into an incoherent mess. Winter hid behind his shades and gave them all a tense wave as his driver inched and honked his way through the crowd. At last, they reached the barricades lining the road, and the commotion fell away into the rhythmic sound of tires against pavement.

  “We’re never returning to that show,” Claire hissed beside him as she typed madly into her phone. “I’m sorry I ever arranged it.”

  “It’s Evelyn Dace,” Winter replied tiredly. “Of course we were going to say yes.”

  She tensed her jaw, teeth grinding. “Do you know what that producer said to me when I told them to cut the interview? ‘Think of all the headlines after this airs.’ The audacity. Like we’re the ones who need headlines. And after that mistreatment?” She cut off, her eyes flashing. “I’ll take care of it,” she vowed again.

  In spite of everything, Winter couldn’t help smiling a little at her fury. No one did revenge like Claire. “Don’t go after her entire family, now.”

  “Oh, I’m sparing nothing and nobody. I’m already emailing the head of the network and now I’m texting Stevenson over at Hearst to tear Evelyn a new one. She’ll be lucky to keep her position after I’m done with her.”

  “She was just doing her job.”

  “And I’m doing mine.” Claire looked up at him briefly over her phone. “Believe me, the publisher is going to get a very strongly worded letter from our lawyers. If they don’t want to get themselves caught in legal hell, they’re going to think twice about releasing this book. Oh, and I’m also sending Evelyn a very special gift basket.”

  Winter closed his eyes and groaned. “Claire.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll have her favorite sugared almonds with a card that plays an excruciatingly loud song when opened and has a battery that’s impossible to remove. And glitter. A gallon of glitter.”

  Winter laughed and shook his head at her, then closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “I’m really sorry, Winter,” Claire said, her voice quieter now.

  “It’s okay.” He didn’t even feel angry anymore, or nauseous, or anxious. He was just tired, and all he wanted was room service and the cold comfort of an unfamiliar hotel bed. Outside his tinted window, he could still see clusters of fans on the occasional street corner, framed before the majestic green slope of Diamond Head in the background, cheering as his entourage passed by.

  His phone continued to buzz nonstop. He glanced at it wearily and caught a glimpse of the messages from his friends Dameon and Leo, who had been texting him in their group chat before the broadcast even began.

  r u ok

  Leo’s icon was that of a brown-skinned boy with a grin almost too large for the rest of his features, his light brown curls a wild frame around his face.

  Of course he’s not okay, do you need to ask

  Dameon’s icon was entirely opposite in mood—a side profile of a Black boy with long dreads and a serious expression, looking out at a cityscape from a hiking trail.

  just asking. that was awful

  not you, the interview lady. you just looked unhappy

  Leo wow stop

  stopping

  anyway Winter I’m at Bloom later tonight, come grab drinks and forget this mess

  yall are going to Bloom?

  Best club in the city with food

  i’m jealous, sigh. drink an extra shot for me

  Wish you were here, Leo

  Their texts went on and on. Winter could almost hear them in his head, bickering as they always did during their rehearsals since they began as his backup dancers at the beginning of his career. Technically, they were still with him because he paid their salaries, but they had also become like his brothers, his second family and closest friends.

  But only Dameon was here in Honolulu with him this time. After what had happened in London last year, Leo had taken a sabbatical to rest at home with his family. The memory still triggered Winter’s guilt. Leo wouldn’t have been in that situation, had it not been for Winter. And Leo deserved to recover, although Winter missed his friend sorely.

  But at least Dameon was still here. Maybe Winter could use some company tonight, could vent about the day with him and laugh over a few drinks.

  I’m ok, he texted back. Heading back now.

  Then he put his phone down and closed his eyes. He should try to call his mother, ask her about the book directly. But right now, he didn’t have the strength. All he wanted to do was shut down.

  He turned his phone over idly and nudged a finger under the rubber case, touching the edge of a business card he always kept tucked inside.

  It was a card for the Claremont Hotel in Saint Paul, Minnesota, one of the finest luxury stays in the city. But Winter knew what the business card was really for, that inside the hotel hid the headquarters of the Panacea Group, the place where he first met Sydney. As they often did, he found his thoughts wandering back to her. What she might be doing. Where in the world she might be. What dangerous mission she might be on without him.

  If you’re ever in need of help, Sydney had said to him, call us.

  He’d memorized the number, even though he’d never used it. For the past year, he had been searching for every excuse in the world to dial that number and get patched through to Panacea, hoping for another chance to dip his toe back into that secret world, fantasizing that the person who picked up on the other end would be Sydney.

  Laughable, of course. Why would they ever need him again? He was nothing but an entertainer. The mission he’d been sent on had been an unusual, once-in-a-blue-moon kind of situation. He would probably never see Sydney again. Panacea would never contact him again. That was just the way it would be, and the sooner he accepted that, the better.

  By the time they arrived at the hotel, the sun had lowered enough to touch the water, and the entire sky was a rainbow of setting colors against gathering clouds, foreshadowing warm rains later in the night. Winter could feel himself crashing, his emotions turning ever inward.

  “I’ll have some tea sent to your room,” Claire said as the elevator stopped on his floor. “Jasmine, decaf, no sugar, two kettles of water. You just get some rest, okay?”

  Winter nodded as the elevator doors slid open. He stepped out.

  “Good night, Claire,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Good night, Winter,” she answered, already back on her phone.

  He walked down the hall toward his suite. After the chaos at the beach, he should have been happier about being left alone—but as he went, he felt the empty air close in around him, thick and suffocating. He couldn’t muster the energy to hang out with Dameon right now, and yet he didn’t know where to put the anxiety that now thrummed within him.

  Sure, Dameon and Claire could listen to his woes, could sympathize, but no one could truly understand the strange path he walked, or feel the same fears that now swirled inside him.

  Wasn’t all this what he wanted? Wasn’t he so lucky? Hadn’t he once been poor and forgotten, hungering for affection every day of his life? A hunger so deep that even a stadium filled with fans couldn’t sate it? Didn’t he crave the attention?

  No, it wasn’t the attention he needed. It was the love. He just wanted to create something and know that it mattered to someone, that he mattered. That maybe someone, somewhere was listening to his work, nodding along to the words, feeling something real. He just wanted to make things that made people happier, wanted to close his eyes in a stadium and hear the voices of fifty thousand souls all singing along. But he didn’t know how to get that without also getting this—the salacious rumors, the invasive questions, the cruel articles full of false information, the microphones shoved in his face.

  No one knew what it was like to keep an entire life bottled up for fear of it getting out to the public, what it was like to sit on the floor of a hotel room and hesitate to call his own mother, just in case she might leak his words to the press.

  No, that wasn’t entirely true. Sydney knew. Sydney would understand that.

  When she was in his life, he’d felt like, finally, someone understood the most misunderstood parts of him, without him ever saying any of it aloud. Someone had been with him and seen him for who he truly was. And then she had vanished without a trace.

  Maybe it was for the best. While he was here, doing trivial interviews about nothingness, she was out saving the world, without a single person applauding her. Maybe he didn’t deserve her, anyway.

  His mind was still on Sydney when he turned the corner and saw a girl standing outside the door to his penthouse suite.

  His heart jumped.

  Sydney? Could it be?

  But then the silhouette turned, and he recognized the figure with a sinking feeling. How did she get up here past the security?

  She must have just come from a party—under her trench coat glittered a silver dress that winked at him as she moved. Her hair was pinned up in pretty brown waves, a loose tendril grazing the side of her face. And those eyes—just like how he remembered them. She looked as lovely as she had the final time he put his arms around her waist and she whispered his name the way only she knew how.

  That was before their tumultuous breakup. Before she broke his heart for the dozenth time.

  She was the last person he needed to see right now.

  At the sight of him standing there, frozen, she smiled, pushed away from the wall, and sauntered over to him.

  “Well, Winter,” said Gavi Ginsburg. “You’ve certainly looked better.”

  2

  The Calm Before the Reunion

  Sydney Cossette was the kind of girl nobody noticed.

  She could enter a room without a single glance turning her way. A stranger would strike up a conversation with her only until they spotted someone more interesting. She supposed that she was pretty, with dark blue eyes and blond hair chopped in messy waves to her chin—but unremarkably so. She could meet the same person over and over and they would never remember her name. She could drift from place to place without anyone realizing she was there, flitting along the periphery as a tolerable presence but never the center of attention.

  Niall, her mentor, told her that it was her natural talent. When people don’t notice you, they tend to entrust to you their secrets, sharing weaknesses and vices, failing to recall that they’d ever given them away. Sydney saved those crumbs in her vast memory, as Panacea had trained her to do, archiving them until they became useful. When she needed them again, she’d lay them all out in a neat row. Confessions. Fears. Sins.

  Or, in this case, confirmation of the location of Winter Young’s rehearsal studio.

  Sydney leaned against the driver’s window of the parked white van, adjusted her earpiece, and pretended to be bored as a pair of security guards outside Winter’s hotel argued within earshot.

  “We can’t keep his car idling around the back.”

  “Claire said it had to be here for him first thing in the morning.”

  “But Queen Street will be blocked off until four A.M.”

  “That’s fine. He always practices early.”

  Queen Street. That meant the Waikiki Dance Studio, the only spot with the right facilities in the area. Sydney smiled a little as the two men argued, keeping them at the edge of her vision. Half an hour earlier, one of them had rapped on her window, asking her how long her equipment van was going to be parked here. She’d just given him an innocent shake of her head.

  Claire told me five minutes, she’d said, holding up one hand with all her fingers outstretched. The man had shrugged and walked off, thinking Sydney was part of Winter’s team, and then promptly forgotten all about her.

  “Jackal?”

  “Ouais chef?” she replied distractedly to Niall’s gruff voice in her ear. This was her habit when talking to her mentor, greeting him in one of the twenty-seven languages she knew.

  He grunted, as he always did, and she smiled.

  “Syd, this isn’t a game,” he said.

  “Fine, stopping.”

  “You’re waiting in the van until dawn?”

  “Unless you want me to knock on Winter’s door. I could grab a bellhop uniform,” she offered.

  “No. Fine. Whatever works best,” Niall said. “Just letting you know we only have that van rented out until ten in the morning.”

  “Ten’s all I’ll need.”

  “You sound so sure he’ll agree.”

  “Because I am sure.” Sydney glanced up at the hotel. “After that nightmare of an interview, Winter’s mood will be much better when he wakes up tomorrow. And I’d prefer him at his happiest if I’m going to be asking him to risk his life. Again.”

  “Just try to keep the insults to a minimum.”

  “Me?” Sydney feigned shock. “But I’m always nice.”

  Niall laughed, warm and genuine, and Sydney smiled again. “Just be careful. That area’s crawling with security. Don’t get yourself a black eye from one of his guards.”

  Sydney raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me, the agent you once sent to infiltrate a Swiss bank, that you’re worried I can’t handle a superstar’s security detail?”

  “I don’t know, you can tell me later which is worse. Our intel says Winter’s detail has gotten much more serious since last year.”

  “Have you forgotten that you promoted me to full operative? I’ll be okay, Dad.”

  He sighed. “I’ve told you to stop calling me that.”

  “But it’s our last mission together, Dad. When will I ever get to call you Dad again?”

  Niall snorted, but didn’t argue the point, and a pained silence cut through their conversation. Sydney felt her chest seize, even though her lungs felt fine.

  “What are you going to do,” she asked, keeping her voice light, “once you’re officially retired from Panacea?”

  “Take a vacation, maybe. Go to Bora-Bora. I hear the water’s very nice.”

  “Is Quinn excited to see you?”

  Another pause, followed by Niall clearing his throat. He never seemed comfortable talking about Quinn, but Sydney was always fascinated by Niall’s biological daughter. His real daughter. “I haven’t told her anything yet,” he said at last.

  “Are you nervous?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  But behind Niall’s deep growl, Sydney could hear a hint of fear. She recognized it from their own conversations—she heard it each time she had a brush with death on a mission or pushed her lungs too hard or missed a rendezvous. Sydney recalled the day he’d shown up at her high school in her decrepit, dying town, a secret agent disguised as a recruiter from a local factory. He had been touring the West, looking for promising agents to join Panacea’s training program, and she had been a fifteen-year-old girl who spent her days cutting class, who shoplifted as a coping mechanism, a girl still grieving her mother’s death from the same illness she had. A girl searching for a way out. Niall had caught her breaking into the school’s locked gym, had noticed her penchant for acquiring languages, and offered her a job. She wouldn’t find out until weeks later what Panacea was—or who she was about to become.

  Niall never talked about Quinn, but his silence said more than anything. Sydney knew it must have been hard to have a relationship with a daughter who never saw you, whose childhood you missed but could never explain why.

  “She’ll talk to you,” Sydney said gently.

  Niall didn’t answer right away. “Here’s hoping, right?” he finally replied, and Sydney felt a pang of envy.

  It was stupid, of course, to be jealous of Quinn. She’d never met the woman, and Niall wasn’t Sydney’s father. Hers was an alcoholic who hit her whenever he had a bad day at work, would taunt her for wanting to see the world beyond their small, suffocating town. Her father had let her mother die alone at the hospital because he was too much of a coward to be at her bedside.

  Her father was not a good man, and Sydney had turned her back on him long ago.

  She shoved the memories aside and stared up at the hotel. She knew the truth behind her pain—she was grieving Niall’s retirement as if he were giving her up along with Panacea. After this mission, he would be gone, off to make amends with his estranged daughter, the one that really mattered. Per the agency’s strict rules, he would never make contact with Sydney again. She would be truly alone.

  She still had Sauda, Panacea’s director and her advisor of sorts, but Niall was the one who worked directly with Sydney on each and every one of her missions, had trained her from the start, had vouched for her when her thieving habits returned, when Sauda wanted her kicked out of Panacea for good.

  Served her right, Sydney supposed, for letting herself get attached to someone. Hadn’t that been one of her first lessons at Panacea?

  Loyalty to a secret, above all else.

  Above emotions, above human bonds, above love. Loyalty to duty, to making the world a safer place.

  “Just get the van back before ten.” Niall was still talking, and Sydney’s mind snapped back to the present, to the task at hand. A humid drizzle had begun dotting the van’s windows.