Winter’s blood ran cold at her words. He stared at the vial. It was a suicide drink.

  “They act quickly and painlessly,” Sydney told him.

  “I’m not killing myself,” Winter said automatically.

  “Everyone thinks that,” she went on in a quiet voice. “Until you’re put in the position and you realize you weren’t so different all along.”

  We always give these to our operatives, Sauda had said. That meant Artie, too. Winter stared at the vials and felt his throat close up.

  “The chances of you needing this are slim,” Sauda went on at his silence. “Still. Agency protocol.”

  Sydney was staring closely at Winter now. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Is that how my brother died?” he whispered, turning to face them. “Was he forced to commit suicide?”

  There was a heavy pause. Niall sighed, looking to Sauda as if for her approval to speak. When Sauda nodded, his furrowed gaze returned to Winter.

  “No,” he replied. “Your brother died because he went back for a hostage during an exchange gone wrong, against Panacea’s orders. He died saving a life.”

  Winter closed his eyes. Once, when he’d eaten too little after a hectic week of touring and a rushed visit home to check on his mother, he’d fainted during rehearsals and had to cancel several concerts in order to let his body recover. He felt like that now—the same blurring of the world around him, the same rush in his head, the same loosening of his body.

  Of course Artie had died saving a life.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Sydney take an instinctive step toward him, as if preparing to catch him if he fell. He shook his head at her and stepped away. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. Words sat on his tongue and melted.

  “You’ve witnessed many things, Winter,” Sauda said softly to him now. “Have you ever witnessed war? I’ve been sent on assignment into one. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped in something you can’t escape?” Sauda looked at him with an expression of pity, and he felt his insides recoil from it. “The only reason we are putting you in danger’s path is because an entire population is depending on us. And when I say that, I want you to picture what that really means. Mothers walking their kids to the bus. Construction workers eating lunch together. Fathers waiting at the train station for their families. Children on their first day of kindergarten. People in love, people with friends, people with full lives. Good people.” She nodded at Winter. “Your brother fully understood the dangers of this job when he accepted it. I want you to, as well. I’m not going to lie to you about how dangerous this will be, but I promise that you won’t go in unprepared. Okay?”

  He swallowed hard. Sauda’s voice seemed far away. “Okay,” he heard himself answer.

  As they stepped out of the cubicle and back into the rest of the Experimental Design space, he could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. The enormous room felt like it might swallow him whole. There was a cry bottling in his throat, the edges of his eyes threatening to tear up, grief seeking the relief of spilling out. He imagined Artie wandering this place, taking assignments from his superiors, pocketing the tiny vials of toxins without question. Accepting that he might need to use them someday.

  “We don’t have much time,” Niall said as he stopped in the hall and turned to face Winter. “So, we’re going to be training you hard in the coming weeks.” He cast a steely gaze between Winter and Sydney, who gave him a sullen look. “I suggest you two become acquainted quickly. You’ll need it. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sydney replied, and Winter nodded in silence.

  As Niall and Sauda walked ahead, Sydney leaned closer to him.

  “Just don’t push me,” she said in a low voice. “And don’t get in my way. Do what I tell you, and we’ll get along fine.”

  Like hell he was going to cry in front of this girl. He pushed down his tears. “I always appreciate a partnership where I get no say at all,” he replied irritably.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “With all due respect, I’ve got a promotion on the line because of you. So come talk to me again when you get some experience.”

  Winter stopped in his tracks, and Sydney stopped with him. “You know,” he said, “ever since I set foot inside that meeting room upstairs, I’ve felt like you wanted to cut my head off. I’d love a clue as to why you’re giving me a hard time.”

  She stared up at him with such a level look that he felt like she was burning a hole through his head. When she did speak, her voice sounded chipped with ice. “Here’s your clue. I’ve seen plenty of people like you.”

  “Like what?” he snapped.

  “You cultivated that swagger of yours to hide all your insecurities. But you actually wanted to become famous because you were afraid not to be. Ah, I’m right, aren’t I? The more swagger, the more insecurities. And I’ve learned over time that insecure men are the worst, prone to falling apart at the most inconvenient times.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “And what about you?” he said. “It seems to me like you’re hiding a few things of your own. Bad family life? Mean parents? You must have gotten your shitty attitude from somewhere. But I guess we all have our issues, don’t we?”

  He knew he shouldn’t go after her seeking to hurt. The words that came out of his mouth now didn’t sound like him at all. But his heart felt like it had been shredded today, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  Sydney’s stare went flat, the blue darkening like a storm.

  “I wish your brother was still alive,” she said, her voice cool and steady. “Maybe we wouldn’t need you.”

  “Don’t bring my brother into this,” he said quietly.

  “Then don’t make me,” she called over her shoulder, then waved a leather bracelet in the air. “Also, you need to keep a better eye on your things. I’ll drop it at reception for you.”

  She’d somehow managed to slip one of his bracelets right off his wrist, and he hadn’t felt a thing. He glanced down at his arm, then stared at her retreating figure, his mouth open in shock, unable to find the right words. All he could do was watch her walk blithely away without looking back.

  6

  The New Job

  The first assumption about Winter Young that Sydney admitted she’d gotten wrong was that he was foolish.

  Stubborn, yes. Dense … yes. But definitely not foolish. The Winter Young that she’d met at the Panacea headquarters had been a boy with a careful eye. She had noticed it about him the instant he stepped inside, the way he’d taken in the room around him and assessed her and the other agents with a single, sweeping gaze, the gestures in his hands and the tilt of his head, the way his gaze jumped from person to person. The anger in his eyes that had sparked when she’d mentioned his brother’s name.

  In those moments, she saw right away why Sauda had chosen him.

  Now she was lying on her bed in the thickening dark of evening, listening to the faint sound of sirens on the streets far below her apartment, methodically memorizing the contents of a black folder Niall had delivered to her apartment.

  The folder contained all the documentation for her new cover as Winter Young’s bodyguard. Fake name (Ashley Coving Miller), fake driver’s license and passport, fake high school diploma, fake passwords and account numbers for Ashley’s supposed direct deposits into a fake personal bank account. An acceptance letter to a real bodyguard company, Elite Securities, that occasionally worked with Panacea, which Sauda had secured for Sydney. There were fake business cards for her in case she needed to hand them out, fake photos of fake family members, fake email accounts filled with fake emails dating back to over a year ago, fake phone contacts for fake best friends. A custom-made phone with a bunch of instructions on how to unlock its encryption and secure call lines back to Panacea. There were even fake credit cards that her fictional persona hadn’t paid off, fake expired gym memberships, fake achievement certificates for martial arts, fake gun licenses, and fake rants on fake social media accounts, complete with fake replies posted by fake acquaintances.

  Details littering a fake life that made it look real.

  Sydney read and reread the papers until she could feel her true identity blurring into this imaginary one. Then she closed her eyes, thoughts of Winter swirling in her mind.

  Winter was smart, smarter than she cared for—even if he’d made it too easy for her to slip his bracelet off his wrist. Simpler subjects were less work; they did what they were told and didn’t stray from the plan. Sydney would have to make sure Winter didn’t get any wild ideas of his own during this mission and lead them off on some tangent.

  Her second mistaken assumption was that his fame was a gimmick. No, this boy was destined for it. He was a unique kind of beautiful that made her nervous, the kind that didn’t belong at all with the rest of society. Everything about him—dark eyes and thick lashes, the rich black hair that looked effortlessly perfect, the pillow-soft lips, the tattoos that decorated his forearms down to his left hand, the grace in his stride, the lines of his figure—drew the eye. He’d stepped into the meeting room, and it’d felt like his presence had lit the air itself on fire. Those at Panacea who’d seen him that day had been trained to stay calm in all circumstances—but even so, everyone at headquarters was abuzz with news of Winter’s visit.

  It made her want to laugh. It made her want to tell Sauda to fire him. Spies didn’t look like him. As far as she knew, his brother certainly didn’t—although she’d never crossed paths with Artie Young. Spies were meant to have looks that blended in, to be able to melt into the shadows.

  Winter Young couldn’t disappear if he had the superpower of invisibility. Frankly, she was surprised he wasn’t covered in moths all drawn to his light.

  How the hell was she supposed to complete a mission—let alone get promoted—while saddled with a boy like this?

  Sydney opened her eyes in the dark and ran her hand idly across the silken sheets of her bed. She didn’t know why she disliked him so much, why she wanted to give him such a hard time. He’d stepped into the meeting room yesterday, and she’d felt a lurch of irritation deep in her gut, an emotion that made her want to memorize every bit of him so she could figure out how to bring him down to size, to force him to take a step back and feel unmoored in a new place.

  The feeling had left her with a pounding heart and an ache in her stomach. No wonder she hadn’t been able to resist swiping his bracelet.

  She pitied him in regards to his brother’s death, she really did. The pain on his face had been real and deep. But Winter Young got to choose to be here. He hadn’t come to Panacea because he was forced to, because life had left him no other options and steered him down a path of no return. Winter chose this, just as he’d chosen to become an entertainer, chosen what kind of star he wanted to be, who he could surround himself with, what he wanted to do.

  Sydney was here because this was her only way out of her childhood. She had to run from the ghost of her mother, from the memory of the incessant beeping sound in the hospital room and the wheeze of her breathing. She had to escape the leaf-strewn curb in front of her childhood home, the angry rumble of her father’s drunken voice. She had to learn how to stop stealing, had to break the temptation to shoplift from shelves and desks, the obsessive need to control something in her life.

  Her fingers twitched, aching always to take. She looked to her side and out the floor-to-ceiling window of her apartment at the vast city below. Told herself that she no longer lived in North Carolina but in Seattle, far from the other coast. That she was no longer a child.

  Her phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unknown source. Sydney rolled over to grab her earbuds.

  “Ich schlafe,” she said in German.

  “No you weren’t,” Niall muttered on the phone. “And stop it, Syd.”

  “What is it?”

  “Sounds like bodyguards at the birthday functions will also need to be in costume. Something about good aesthetics for the official photos.”

  “Good aesthetics?”

  “They don’t want a bunch of penguin suits in every shot. So you’ll get to wear something fancy and we’ll be busy implanting a listening chip in it.”

  She sighed, even as a part of her mind perked up at the thought. Eli Morrison was going all out. “Please give me functional shoes.”

  “And we’re officially starting you with Winter next week. Tuesday. Be here early, so we can get your current measurements for a fitting. And cut him some slack, all right?”

  “Sauda told you to say that, didn’t she?”

  “Well, Sauda’s not wrong.”

  “Do you think she’s right about hiring Winter?”

  “I think it’s a bit too late for that question, kid, and I also think it’s not your place to question Sauda’s decisions.”

  “Sauda would tell me to speak my mind,” she replied. “And I think we’re making a mistake.”

  “And is that because you think he can’t do the mission, or because you just don’t like him?”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d be a good Panacea agent, either. And yet here you are.”

  Sydney laughed. The sound choked for a second in her throat, and her weak lungs gave a little spasm.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, Dad,” she replied. “Just a tickle in my throat.”

  She could almost see him rolling his eyes in exasperation at her nickname for him. She didn’t tell him, though, that in moments like this, she didn’t use it as a nickname at all. She’d said it because she liked imagining that he was the father she could have had.

  But that was a silly thought. Niall wasn’t a father to her. She was just an employee, under contract. If Niall knew about her lung condition, he’d terminate her immediately from Panacea’s program. So she’d never told anyone about it, and she’d managed well enough for this long. Someday, when it worsened, she’d have to disclose it, but until then, well, this worked fine.

  “Okay,” came Niall’s low rumble. “Tuesday, then. I don’t expect us to turn Winter Young into a spy in a single week, but I expect him to at least be reliable enough for one mission. Sound doable?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” Sydney stared out at the city outside her window, dreading the start of training Winter. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “When are you going to ask Sauda out on a real date?”

  Niall made an annoyed sound in his throat, and Sydney had to stifle a smile. “Against regulations, Syd. You know that.”

  “Oh, come on. I won’t tell headquarters.”

  “Good night, Sydney,” he muttered, then hung up.

  She put on a looping track of rain on her phone, then tossed it aside and closed her eyes. The sound of water filled her thoughts, and she felt the rising tension in her muscles relax a bit, her neck loosening, the tightness in her jaw fading. She closed her eyes again, then tried to concentrate on nothing but the sheets on her bed.

  Instead, the image of Winter arriving at their meeting remained vividly in her mind, the details still intact from when she’d taken in everything about him. He hovered there in the darkness, refusing to disappear.

  Sydney frowned. She envisioned herself taking up a shovel and literally heaving him out of her thoughts.

  Maybe Winter would turn out to be a pleasant surprise. Maybe he could learn the ropes faster than she expected. Maybe she could prepare him enough to at least survive this mission and get her promotion to full agent. Then he could go back to his life and she could go back to hers, and she wouldn’t have to deal with him again.

  She let herself stew in that resolution until she finally fell asleep, Winter’s face still burned into her mind.

  7

  The Afterthought

  When Winter knocked on the door to his mother’s apartment, he knew immediately that his visit would be a bad one. He always knew.

  If he could hear hurried shuffling inside, followed by the opening of the door and Mom standing on the other side, it would be fine. It meant she was doing okay, that she was happy to see him, and they could even have a normal conversation. But today she didn’t answer right away, and the door stayed closed. A second later, Winter heard the soft click of the lock on the other side, followed by his mother’s singsong voice coming from somewhere far away in the apartment.

  “Come in,” she called to him. “Door’s unlocked.”

  His heart sank a little. He’d done this a thousand times over the years, and nothing about it was ever a surprise. But today he was leaving to begin his Panacea training, so his nerves were already frayed. The thought of being under Sydney Cossette’s tutelage for a week had him on edge. And having to endure this painfully awkward visit right now made him feel like turning back around and heading down the elevator to the street below.

  But he didn’t. Even though his life had become a never-ending current of plane rides and hotel stays, he had never once failed to check on his mother before leaving on a trip. So instead, he fixed one of the rolled-up sleeves of his collar shirt, rested the bouquet of flowers in his hand against his shoulder, and opened the door.

  Five years and hundreds of concerts in front of millions of fans—yet he still felt his heart flutter with anxiety as he stepped inside.

  The apartment looked like it always did—a state of pleasant clutter that was somehow both chaotic and organized, the kind that would appear artistic if drawn by a skilled hand, as if everything had paused in the middle of being done. The side table near the entryway was filled up underneath and on top with piles of books organized by their interior color, all with their dust jackets removed. A buttery yellow blanket lay half-folded and strewn over the couch, and every inch of the coffee table was hidden under an assortment of books, magazines, and potted plants that trailed haphazard vines down to the rug. A fishbowl with two goldfish sat next to a milky pink ceramic figurine of Buddha and a lucky cat sculpture on the dining table. Stacks of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain dishes sat unsorted on the marble kitchen counter, pulled out from the dishwasher but not yet put away.