Fourteen, I responded.
Three seconds. Then:Carmine.
It was the correct response to a code that changed every six hours. Only MI6 personnel with high-level clearance had access to it. Whoever was texting me was legitimate.
Another text followed almost immediately.Now open the fucking door.
Once opened, the man on the other side didn’t wait to be invited. He pushed past me into the flat—average height, athletic build, features that seemed to slide out of focus even as I looked at them. The kind of face designed to be forgotten.
“You’re being relocated,” the stranger said. “Come with me.”
No explanations. But whoever he was, he had the code that meant exactly what he’d said—that we were being relocated. Within SIS, whether MI6 or Unit 23, that sequence meant you followed orders immediately. Without question. Anything else would be considered a refusal of a direct order.
“Transport is waiting. Two minutes.”
Phee already had her go bag when I swept past her to get mine.
As we followed him to the lift, I spotted three more agents in the corridor. One entered it with us. When the doors opened in the underground car park, a black SUV sat waiting.
We’d barely gotten in when it sped off.
“Moved where?” I asked. “Why?”
Neither the mystery man nor the driver responded.
The building was in Southwark,overlooking the Thames—a glass-and-steel tower with a private entrance and a concierge who nodded without asking questions. The stranger led us into a lift that required a key card and a six-digit code.
The doors opened directly into the penthouse. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped the space, offering apanoramic view of the London skyline—the Shard glittering to the east, St. Paul’s dome lit against the darkness, the Thames a shadowed ribbon far below. The floors were pale marble, the furniture sleek leather and polished chrome. A Steinway grand piano sat in a corner near the glass, its black lacquer gleaming.
“Stay here,” the stranger said. “Someone will be in touch.”
“Wait.” I turned, but he was already stepping into the lift. “Who’s going to?—”
The doors slid shut.
Ophelia’s footsteps were silent on the marble as she walked through the space. “This isn’t a safe house.”
“No.” I walked through the flat, taking in the details. Expensive but impersonal. The kind of place that looked staged rather than lived in. “It isn’t.”
A photograph on a side table caught my eye. A woman holding a little boy; she was blonde, elegant, and smiling at the camera. The boy couldn’t have been more than four or five, dark-haired and serious-eyed.
Something nagged at me. The woman’s face. I knew her from somewhere.
I picked up the frame and studied the image. Where had I seen her before?
“What is it?” Phee asked.
I turned the photo toward her. “She looks familiar, but I can’t place her.”
Phee took the frame, examined it, then shook her head. “I don’t recognize her.”
I continued staring at it, knowing it was going to drive me mad until I figured it out. I knew her. I was certain of it. But from where?
We explored the rest of the flat—bedrooms, a study lined with books, a bathroom with a soaking tub that overlooked the river. Everything was pristine and expensive. Yet nothing told us who owned it or why we’d been brought here.
“This is going to bother me all night,” I muttered, picking the photo up again.
Then it clicked.
