Chapter One
Ten Years Ago
Washington, DC
As luck would have it, the first time Alexandra Sterling really wanted to kill a man happened to be the night before she started spy school.
Of course, technically, the program was called the Clandestine Operative Training and Assessment Course, but technically, COTAC didn’t even exist, so Alex was going to call it whatever she wanted. In fact, until she got on the bus at six a.m., she was also going to eat whatever she wanted. (Chicken fingers.) And wear whatever she wanted. (Her stretchiest pants and a ratty old T-shirt from a German band she told everyone was her favorite. Her actual favorite was Taylor Swift.)
Alex was going to spend her last night as a regular person taking the world’s hottest bath and watching the world’s trashiest TV before starting on the world’s most covert adventure.
But she couldn’t do any of that until her chicken fingers got there, and that’s what brought Alex to the bar of the airport Ramada and the guy who had been staring at her for the better part of twenty minutes.
The problem wasn’t so much that The Guy was staring—it was how. Usually, Alex could read people in three seconds flat from fifty paces. She could always pick out the women who hated her because she smiled too much and the men who hated her because she didn’t smile enough; the boys who looked at her strangely when they found out she’d set the curve on every test she took at MIT—as if they didn’t know whether that should make her hotter or more frigid. (They always settled on frigid.)
Alex had been interpreting looks from nurses and doctors for aslong as she could remember, all of them wondering how such a little girl could have caused her sister so much trouble.
It was as if the whole world had decided that Alex was just too bold, too sassy, and too selfishly strong for her own good—and they did it all without ever saying a word.
She had grown up speaking English, French, German, Russian, and a little Italian. But, most of all, Alex was fluent in people. Still, as she studied The Guy at the end of the bar... Alex didn’t know what to make of him.
He was white and midtwenties. Maybe a little older because his eyes looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with jet lag. He kept an elbow on the bar and a beer in his hand—sipping slowly—like all his problems were waiting at the bottom and he wasn’t in a hurry to reach them.
His white dress shirt was open at the collar, and he had the kind of haircut you could find on half the male population, but his dark hair had turned wavy and mussed from the snow. It should have made him look worse, but it actually made him look better, and Alex started to wonder if she’d remembered to pack a hairbrush and also when was the last time she’d used it?
At first glance, there was nothing special about The Guy at all. A man made to fill the background, a nonplayer character in the game of life. But that didn’t change the fact that Alexhadnoticed him. And now she couldn’tunnotice him.
The TV over the bar showed a football game. On the screen, a giant in shoulder pads was spiking a ball and dancing in the end zone, but the man at the bar didn’t even glance in its direction. He didn’t officially glance in Alex’s direction, either, but she’d felt his eyes on her from the moment she sat down. Silent and assessing and... unimpressed.
She should have brushed her hair.
She should have put on a bra.
She should have forgotten about the chicken fingers and gone to bed hungry because Alex felt awkward for the first time in her twenty-two years. Uncomfortable. Second-guessing everything fromher T-shirt to her food choices to the fact that she was probably making a mistake with her career and her whole, entire life. She was second-guessing everything that had brought her to that moment even though Alex didn’t do second guesses. Or second chances. Or second place. Alex didn’t do seconds of any kind. Or, at least, she didn’t use to.
But, in a year, she’d probably have a different name. She’d be living in a different country and speaking a different language. She’d be a different person. And then she’d have a second life. But at the moment, she was just a woman who was tired and scared and wishing that her chicken fingers would get there already.
The restaurant was loud and busy. It was January, and sharp littlepings sounded as sleet hit the slanting windows that had turned into a frosty blur with the storm. The airport must have started canceling flights because the place was filling up with flight crews and business travelers and a dozen twentysomething blondes in T-shirts that readbride squadand another blonde whose shirt readbride.
The Bride Squad must have ordered a bottle of tequila because they were doing shots and eyeing The Guy, but The Guy stayed at the other end of the bar, eyeing Alex.
So Alex did the only thing she could do and eyed him back.
“I’ll go check on those chicken wings.” A distracted bartender topped off Alex’s club soda and headed to the back before Alex could shout “Chickenfingers!”
The wind was roaring now. It made a haunting sound, and the glass had frosted over—little beads of condensation running down, revealing strips of blurry lights and blowing snow while a dozen more people crowded into the bar, looking for tables.
“Really coming down out there,” a voice said from nearby, and Alex turned to see adifferentguy sliding onto the empty stool beside her. His watch was worth more than most cars, and he was going to order the most expensive scotch in the place and then slam it before offering to get one for Alex. “It’s packed in here,” the new guy said.
Alex nodded, distracted and a little numb. “Yeah.”
“I was lucky they still had a suite. Macallan. Neat. And leavethe bottle,” Bromeo told the bartender before shifting his gaze onto Alex. “And I think we’ll take another glass.” The grin he gave her was supposed to be smooth, but it was closer to leering, and it was all Alex could do not to sigh in relief because, finally, a guy she could read! A guy who made sense! Everything from his fancy watch to his slicked-back hair told a story of mediocre grades at top-tier schools, of nasty divorces and bad credit and jobs he got from friends of his father.
On the other side of the room, there were a dozen bridesmaids who should have been getting drunk en route to some all-inclusive in Jamaica—women a little bitter that their friend had made them pay for new highlights and an expensive trip, and now they were probably stuck sleeping four to a room until the weather cleared.
Go tell them about your suite, she wanted to say, but Bromeo was looking at her lips and asking, “So what’s your name?” Alex told herself she should lie—make something up. She should flirt and kiss and pretend she was the kind of woman who could be attracted to that kind of man. She had one last night of freedom—one last night of life as she knew it. And he wasn’t entirely asymmetrical. Maybe...
“Her name is Mrs. Masterson,” someone said, and Alex turned to see The Guy standing behind her, a proprietary gleam in his eye. “I’m Mr. Masterson. Thanks for keeping my seat warm.”
