“And what are we after?”
“A single piece of evidence. If you succeed in getting it, we can take Morrison down the morning after his daughter’s birthday celebration.”
Sydney’s gaze settled on the billboards in the distance. A few had gone dark as they prepared to rotate onto other news, but she could still see a faint burn in the screen of the boy’s profile.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that sending in a pop star for a mission like this was a huge mistake. Eli Morrison wasn’t just a criminal tycoon. Once, he had ordered a hit job on a businessman and left behind nothing but a neat row of limbs for investigators to find. Another time, he’d figured out that one of his crew was a mole solely because of the flowers the man had chosen for a banquet’s centerpieces; the man—and his entire family—had vanished that night. Eli had eyes and ears everywhere. He was the kind of job that required infallible precision. He missed nothing. He had no qualms about killing someone with his own hands. And he always got away with it.
So the thought of recruiting Winter Young seemed laughable. What had he ever done to qualify himself to face a target like that? Did they even have time to train him? Would he break their cover within five minutes of landing in London? Would he be the reason why Morrison ordered them beheaded? Sydney grimaced at the thought, annoyed that her death might come down to a pop star’s idiocy.
“Well?” Niall asked. “You want the mission or not?”
She almost laughed. Niall knew the answer would be yes. Sydney said yes to every mission. She’d fallen into the work like a fish was born ableto swallow the ocean. Everything about it—the secrecy, the meticulous planning, the danger, the satisfaction of handing bad people what they deserved—took her one step away from her past and one step forward into her future, where she got to choose her path and what she risked herself for, where she got to be damn good at what she did.
Her lips tightened. What would this mission mean to Winter? Just some fun and the future perk of being able to brag about working as a spy? If he turned Panacea’s offer down, wouldn’t he just go home to his millions and his careless life of wealth? What if he decided halfway through that he didn’t want to do it anymore, that he wanted out?
She felt herself bristle again. Sydney said yes to every mission, but that didn’t mean she had to like them.
“Any day now, Syd,” came Niall’s grumble.
Sydney turned her eyes away from the billboards.
“I’m in,” she said.
“Figured you would be,” Niall replied without a change in his tone. “There’s already a car waiting for you downstairs. Get yourself to headquarters. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
4
The Panacea Group
Winter didn’t know what he expected to see at Panacea’s headquarters.
He’d been picked up at his home inside a gated Los Angeles neighborhood, in a nondescript black car equipped with automated drive, its windows tinted with a false landscape so that no one from the outside could see him in it. He’d been shuttled quietly to a private plane at the airport’s VIP terminal, then touched down in Saint Paul, Minnesota, three hours later.
None of his usual entourage was with him—no bodyguards, no Claire, no Leo or Dameon, no assistants. Two paparazzi that had decided to camp near the edge of his neighborhood only saw an unrecognizable car leave with no driver inside.
He hadn’t mentioned a word to Claire about his incident two nights ago. As promised, the agents Sauda and Niall had dropped him off at his hotel after their conversation, and Winter had gotten a minor earful from Claire about leaving the stadium on his own without telling her. He’d eaten dinner with the boys and gone to bed around threeA.M. Had woken up two fitful hours later for an early photoshoot, then flown home. Not a mention anywhere.
Then, at the airport, Claire had texted him to share the news.
Billionaire Eli Morrison wants you for a private concert,she had exclaimed.Big money! Let’s talk.
The text confirmed that Winter’s strange meeting in the back of that car hadn’t been a fever dream. The Panacea Group was real. Sauda had really offered to make him a secret agent.
Winter felt a little bad about keeping a secret from Claire. In all the years they’d been together, he’d told her everything, from the bad to the worst. This time, though, he’d just texted back,Sure.
The details that Claire gave him afterward matched up with everything Sauda had told him. A daughter who was his biggest fan. A private concert in London. Ten thousand guests flown in on a fleet of planes.
Afterward, Winter had hung up and then vomited all his nerves out in his bathroom.
The little sleep he’d gotten since then had been plagued with nightmares about Artie. He sat alone overlooking a black ocean, the lights on the pier all turned off, and sensed a dark silhouette sitting next to him. It felt like Artie, but no matter how hard he tried to make out the person’s features, he couldn’t see anything. And even though he couldn’t remember trying to talk to the silhouette in his dreams, he woke up with a hoarse throat, as if he’d been shouting all night.
Now he sighed, rubbing his temple, and stared out at the cityscape. Usually he found himself idly composing during the moments of travel in his life, but today, fragments of music flitted in and out of his mind, unable to congeal. None of this felt real. Maybe he hadn’t really woken up at all.
Finally, an hour later, the car pulled inside a gated entrance and stopped at the back of a building.
It was the Claremont in downtown, one of the newer luxury hotels in Saint Paul. He stared at the Grecian columns that framed the building’s entrance as he stepped out, then back at the main street beyond the gated entrance he’d passed through, to where other cars were dropping off and picking up passengers from the front of the hotel.
A young associate was holding the door open for him. A gold pin bearing the hotel’s elaborate crest gleamed on the lapel of her jacket.
