Suddenly, everyone he’d ever known seemed like shadow figures in his head, walking through this city of secrets. He didn’t know which direction to turn, whom he could call. There was no one he could think of in this moment that he could talk to.

  There was no one he could trust.

  He thought of Penelope, of the distant look she got in her eyes when he asked her how she coped whenever she felt lonely.

  “There’s an explanation for everything,” Sydney said in the silence. “You just have to trust your instincts.”

  There was still a fog in her eyes and, framed by those long brown lashes, it made her look a little lost. But otherwise she seemed alert again, that slight furrow returning to her brow and a faint scowl touching the edges of her lips. She was wearing his oversized sweater, and he couldn’t help but notice the way it exposed the creamy skin of her left shoulder. There was a birthmark there, the little dark smudge he’d kissed earlier.

  He could still feel a faint tingle on his lips.

  She shifted and spoke again. “Leo could have been bribed.”

  “There isn’t enough money in the world to make Leo want to hurt someone,” Winter snapped.

  “Blackmail, then. I’ve no doubt he didn’t want to do it—no one confesses their crime directly to their victim like that, warns you like that, puts himself at risk, and actually wants to hurt you. His hand was forced, one way or the other. Surely there’s someone in the world he loves more than you, who could be used against him. Did you notice anything strange about Leo recently?”

  Blackmail. Winter thought about Leo’s sisters and his parents, his aunts, his house that was always full of festive, loving, laughing relatives.

  “He was fine during warm-ups,” he said slowly.

  But hadn’t Leo seemed uncharacteristically quiet when the concert finished? No. That was just because he couldn’t come to the after-party. Wasn’t it?

  “After the concert,” he whispered to Sydney. “He didn’t say a word.”

  Sydney looked carefully at him. “And when was he alone, without us all, before that?”

  “The elevator,” they both said at the same time.

  Winter’s hands began to tremble. Hadn’t he, Leo, and Dameon each taken the tiny elevator up to the backstage area? What if Leo’s handler had said something to him then?

  Blackmail.

  If Morrison’s people had threatened Leo’s family, Leo would have done as they asked. Winter could feel it in his gut, could sense his instinct pointing him in the right direction, as Sydney had told him it would. And even then, Leo must have been tortured enough about it not to be able to go through with everything, had been afraid enough for Winter to risk putting his family in danger just to warn him about the drinks.

  The realization felt like a tide of nausea in his stomach. The room suddenly seemed like it was tilting.

  Sydney must have seen the look change on his face, because she nodded. Each minute brought with it more clarity.

  “We don’t know if any of that is true,” he whispered.

  “It’s possible, though,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “That would mean someone knows what we’re doing here,” Winter replied quietly. “And they’ll know soon that Leo failed to deliver on his end of the bargain.”

  “Leo’s going to be on a plane back to America in an hour,” she said. “But we have to get you out of London.”

  Winter frowned. “What? You’re the one that got poisoned.”

  “This is my job. Not yours.”

  “You said where I go, you go.”

  “Well, that was before someone smeared a bunch of nerve agent on your glass and tried to kill you.”

  He sighed. “No.”

  “I’m not asking you, Winter.”

  “I can’t leave you here.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “You’re not even operating with Panacea’s support behind you. You’ll be in London alone.”

  “What did you think an agent’s job involved?” A slant of light had begun to creep across Sydney’s face, casting her deep blue eyes in gold. “I work better that way.”

  “What about the massive diversion you needed from me? What about—”

  “A diversion was a good idea when I didn’t think anyone was hunting you down.” She snapped her fingers. “No one needs your big distraction to be you getting killed. I can get into the museum by myself just fine. Better, actually.”

  “Why are you like this?” he said.

  “Like what?” she shot back.

  “Why are you always so insistent on suffering alone?”

  “Because there’s no point in suffering together, not when it’s impractical. You’ve already done the job you’ve been sent here to do—you got us close enough to Connor Doherty and Penelope Morrison, you’ve helped us uncover what could be the secret vault where we’ll find the evidence that we need. I needed you to be here before. There’s no need for you now.”

  As always, her words stung him in a way he wasn’t used to. Or maybe he was too used to it. Unneeded, unwanted. Maybe he deserved it, after how he’d sent the others off. How long had it been since he’d felt this affected by a girl? He’d been so confident swearing off love. Now he found himself staring at Sydney’s face and felt the stirring of something very different.

  Maybe he didn’t need to stay. But he wanted to. The thought of leaving her here …

  “Please tell me you’re not serious,” he tried again. “There are probably dozens of dangerous people in this city involved in Morrison’s killing—you’ll be in the crosshairs of both them and Morrison’s loyals. And if the plane takes off this evening with only Penelope and me, how will you escape?”

  “Panacea will send another plane eventually.”

  “Eventually,” he said flatly.

  “This is no longer your mission, Winter.” Suddenly Sydney sounded angry. She glared at him, then pushed his arm away from her. To his relief and dismay, she could stand easily on her own now, the effects of the poison all but gone. “Get away from here and back to the States.”

  “And then what?”

  She threw her hands up at him. “What do you want me to say? And then it’s done. We’re done. What’d you think would happen at this point? Go back to your life and leave me alone.”

  He opened his mouth, ready to say more, but she had already turned away from him and was heading toward the stairs. It took but a few more seconds for her to disappear up the steps.

  His muscles tensed, ready to dash off in her direction and find another way—any way—to stop her. But he didn’t.

  Their brief moment of madness, of their hands all over each other, now seemed a million years away.

  Why the hell was he arguing with her on this? She was right. He’d done his job, what Panacea had sent him here to do. His part was finished. Now he had become a liability, and Sydney clearly had no interest in letting that hold her back from what she needed to do.

  And maybe whatever feelings he thought he had for her were an illusion. That would be a good thing. What kind of future could he have with a girl like Sydney, anyway? This mission was simply a chance collision of their two worlds. He was a performer. His life existed on the stage, under the spotlight. And Sydney? Sydney belonged to a secret world, moving in the spaces where Winter didn’t—shouldn’t—go. He had already entangled one of his closest friends in the snare of a trap originally set for himself. Maybe he’d affected the others, too, in ways he didn’t even know about yet.

  He couldn’t afford to be in a relationship with Sydney. Not even a friendship. Not if he valued their safety and their lives.

  But for now, he was still embroiled in this—and Sydney had taught him to follow his instinct. And something in his instinct told him that, if he left her behind now, if he just walked away from people he had come to care about, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

  He was done carrying the weight of regrets on his shoulders.

  Winter turned away from the stairs and toward the front door. As he did, he carefully slid his finger against the tiny tracker embedded into the side of his phone and pulled it out. He slid it under a coaster on a side table.

  Then he pulled out his phone and dialed a number he’d never dialed before.

  It only rang once.

  “Hello?” said Penelope. Her voice sounded small and a little startled.

  “It’s me.”

  Her voice started trembling. He could hear the threat of tears in them. “Winter? Oh my god, I saw the press—are you still trapped in your house?”

  “Don’t worry about me. How are you?”

  “Holding up okay. Winter, look, I have to tell you—”

  He glanced over his shoulder as he reached the door. “We need to talk. Can I meet you early at the palace pavilion?”

  “Early?” She hesitated a moment. “Sure.”

  “Thanks. See you soon.”

  26

  Just Another Job

  To Sydney’s relief, the train she took toward the Victoria and Albert Museum was crowded, giving her the chance to disappear into the rush of people. Her head had cleared now, along with her reflexes and her memory. And the way she’d had to send Winter away.

  Maybe she had overdone it. She’d been so angry, and she wasn’t even sure who she was angry at. Him, probably. Herself, more likely. Or whoever had tried to kill them. Maybe she was mad at this whole situation, the way everything had gone so horribly wrong, the way she had let herself go off the rails with him. The reality that someone wanted them dead. The realization that their relationship was so clearly a dead end.

  The train arrived at South Kensington, and she stepped off with a purposely nonchalant gait, invisible among the flood of tourists and locals, choosing the tunnel toward the museum’s underground entrance instead of the main entrance up on the street. Better to rip the Band-Aid off. She knew the plane that Sauda had sent was probably already at Heathrow, ready and waiting for them. With any luck, Winter would soon be there, too, taking off without her.

  With any luck, the way she’d left him would be the last time she ever saw him. And he would be alive because of it.

  The pang that shot through her chest was so sharp that she sucked her breath in. His hands cupping her face, pulling her to him. The tears glistening in his eyes. The warmth of his breath against her neck, his lips on her skin.

  She forced her mind to pivot and quickened her steps down the tunnel. The sound of her boots was lost among the echoes of voices around her. As she went, she glanced at her phone and checked on Winter’s location. His tracker was still pinging from the house. Soon it should show him making his way to the airport.

  She closed the tracker and kept going. She’d had to part from plenty of fellow operatives in the past without so much as a backward glance.

  And this was just another job.

  She had memorized the layout of the Victoria and Albert Museum during her train ride. It was a massive, magnificent old building chock-full of security cameras, sensors attached to every door, security tables at the main entrances, and dozens of staff that walked the grounds at all open hours.

  The underground entrance, though, was more lax, especially on a weekday before noon. As she approached the nondescript door, the lone guard lounging in a chair beside it cast her a bored glance and just nodded her in. She gave him a sweet smile in return.

  The museum hummed with a moderate crowd. Sydney forced herself to take her time, wandering through the sculpture hall and admiring the Rodin collection like a tourist so that security would forget about her and move on to watching others that entered the space. Then she wandered slowly through the fashion exhibit and past the giant Chihuly chandelier hanging in the main rotunda. A throng of schoolchildren wove around her.

  Finally, she made her way upstairs, where each floor’s crowd grew progressively sparser, until she was several halls away from Eli Morrison’s newly donated wing, where Connor Doherty’s collection was housed. As she passed the stairs leading up to it, she noted the velvet rope blocking the way.

  INSTALLATION IN PROGRESS, said the sign. As expected.

  She entered a hall with no one in it. There, she stood at a corner beside a glass display of ceramics—and tilted her phone up to the nearest blinking fire alarm.

  On her screen appeared a grid showing the thousands of fire alarms in the building. She scrolled past them before picking one located at the opposite end of the museum.

  She tapped on it.

  An electronic screech shattered the silence, echoing throughout the museum’s marble halls.

  Now Sydney had a time limit. Over the ongoing scream of the alarm, an announcement came on over the speakers.

  “Guests and staff, please make your way to the nearest exit. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

  She smiled slightly. A forced evacuation of all staff.

  Sure enough, she saw three security guards make their way down from the roped-off wing holding Connor’s personal collection. Sydney waited until they had disappeared down the stairs. Then she ducked under the velvet rope and sprinted up the steps—before slipping behind one of the pillars at the corridor at the top.

  Three of the four guards that had been standing at attention up here were now gone—but a lone guard remained near the doors of the private collection, looking annoyed and a little uncertain about whether or not he was supposed to stay.

  Sydney scowled at the sight of him and held up her phone again. Then she tapped her screen and waited until she caught the frequency channel of the man’s radio.

  Moments later, she heard it give a telltale crackle. He looked down at it.

  You still there? she typed rapidly on her phone.

  A voice, deep and male and full of static, came on his radio. “You still there?” it said, speaking Sydney’s typed words.

  The man blinked. “Yes?”

  “Get your bloody ass down here,” it said as Sydney typed, as if someone in charge downstairs was summoning him.

  He returned his radio to his belt and muttered something about being pushed around. He glanced once at the doors behind him. Moments later, he went hurrying down the corridor in the wake of his fellow guards. Sydney pressed herself against the pillar as he rushed by.

  He’d almost made it past her before a real guard’s voice came on his speaker, making him stop in his tracks.

  “Faulty trigger, they’re saying,” the voice said. “You still there?”

  He halted. “What, I’m staying now?” he snapped.

  “Did I say to leave?” came the reply.

  Sydney’s chest tightened. Goddamnit, she thought. Plan B, then. She hated Plan B. So crude.

  The man looked around. He turned toward the pillar where she was hiding.

  Sydney moved before his gaze could latch onto her. With a single leap, she aimed at his neck and hit him hard in his Adam’s apple.

  His eyes widened. His hands flew to his throat as he made a low, choking sound.

  Sydney struck him hard in the jaw with the edge of her phone. He stumbled, dazed. She hit him again—his limbs went limp. She caught him before he could fall, staggering under his weight, then dragged him awkwardly to the side of the hall so he was partly hidden behind the pillars. Let the other guards look around for him for a few seconds and spare her some more time.

  She propped the unconscious man up in the shadows, then darted to the double doors he was guarding. She slid inside without a sound, closing them behind her as if she had never been in the hall at all.

  She found herself standing in Connor Doherty’s private collection, surrounded by a breathtaking array of precious stones.

  The fire alarms were still screeching, but Sydney knew this room must have its own alarm system.

  She took out her roll of Necco Wafers, poured a bunch of the candy into her palm, and then used the edge of her phone to crush them into as fine a powder as she could manage with her limited time. When she was finished, she blew it into the air in a cloud of glittering dust. As she did, she saw a faint grid of laser lines show up here and there, momentarily visible from the slightly reflective nature of the candy’s artificial additives. She took a quick photo before the grid vanished back into nothing.

  Then she carefully made her way through the space, her movements steady as she followed the lines on her phone.

  Winter would ace this, she thought as she went. His face sprang unbidden into her mind. She imagined how easily his graceful body might slip through the lines, how quickly he’d be able to move across the room.

  Stop getting distracted, she scolded herself. Winter should be halfway to the airport by now. She was operating alone.

  She went to the display case located in front of the spot where the infrared display had shown the secret room’s outline. Her skin prickled as she moved. No matter how many times she checked a room, she always felt watched, like there was still a camera in here that she hadn’t accounted for.

  She put her phone on the floor in front of the glass display case, then stepped aside. A perfect hologram of Connor Doherty appeared an instant later, hovering over the phone, as if he were standing right here in the room.

  The display case’s glass seemed to flicker. She felt the shelf shudder against the back wall of the room. Then the wall slid open, revealing a small, secret space that now lit up with soft blue light.

  Sydney’s heart jumped into her throat. She was in.

  It looked like a panic room. Maybe that was all it was. As she stepped in, though, she saw that what she’d thought was a wall wasn’t one at all—but white boxes all stacked on top of one another, floor to ceiling.

  She pulled one of them down and opened it.

  Notebooks. Written ledgers. There were smaller boxes, too, and when Sydney opened one of them, it contained digital drives as small and thin as her nail, stacked on top of each other. Even these couldn’t be nearly the total amount of transactions done by an organization as large as Eli’s empire. This was just the merest fraction, maybe a month’s worth of deals. These had to be their latest—anything older would be destroyed, with no reason to keep the files around as incriminating evidence.