“You too, Mom,” he said, his hands in his pockets. “Love you.”
She gave him a smile over her shoulder and waved at him. He didn’t hear her say it back. Then she was gone, hurrying toward the elevator, leaving nothing but the faint scent of jasmine perfume on the air.
Winter stood there for a long moment, his heart still struggling in his throat, feeling the crush of loneliness curl its cold fingers around him. He pictured the vase of tulips back inside his mother’s apartment, beautifully fresh blooms that no one would appreciate, ready to spend the week alone, dying. By the time his mother came back from New York, they would be dead.
He shivered, suddenly missing the company of his entourage. Of the roar of the crowd. Of anyone.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed in his pocket. When he pulled it out, he saw an incoming call from Claire.
“What’s up?” he said, his voice hoarse.
“This new girl you hired,” Claire said, sounding slightly irritated. “Did you tell her to meet up with us for lunch today? Because she’s at my door and asking where you are. She’s cute, and she looks like she could kill someone.”
Sydney. Winter felt the shards of his grief retreat a bit, and the bubbleof a laugh rising in his throat. Sydney really wasted no time getting on the nerves of others in his circle.
“I did,” he sighed into the phone. “And I’m on my way.”
“I’ll order your usual,” Claire said. “Don’t take too long picking your outfit. Love you.”
She hung up before he could say anything back. Winter stared at his phone, the weight of being alone momentarily lifted by the relentless cheer in Claire’s voice. The ease with which she showed him affection.
He could never understand how she always knew when he needed her.
He slid the phone back in his pocket and headed for the stairs, leaving his mother’s empty apartment behind.
8
Rules of the Game
One floor below the Panacea Group’s Experimental Design level was a massive, underground training area. Running around the circular space was a fifty-foot-wide tunnel with a track on the ground and on its walls, designed for agents to practice driving and riding techniques. The main floor was split into quadrants, and those quadrants then equally split into various habitats, spaces that simulated extreme heat or cold or humidity or dryness, complete darkness or baking sunlight, every environment they could think of in order to push their agents to their limits. There were physical therapy training areas and gyms, matted spaces for learning martial arts and self-defense.
There was everything.
The first time Sydney had ever visited this space was when she was fifteen, two months after she officially joined Panacea, determined to become the best agent they’d ever had. Sauda had shown her around the area herself, watching Sydney’s stunned expression as a young teen, the hungry way her eyes took in everything around her. She had trained relentlessly down here, earning her entry into specific quadrants and environments, graduating into levels of weaponry and vehicles and combat. She had survived an immersive course where they’d transformed the entire space into a realistically functioning city of spies and assassins, had spent six months living in that simulation and come out of it so entrenched that sometimes she still felt like she was living in that fictional world.
Sydney had studied for two years down here.
Winter would spend a week. And she was in charge of getting him up to speed.
Maybe that was also why she felt a little resentment toward him, she realized as she watched him step out of the elevator to meet her on the main training floor, his hair casually swept up and his hands in the pockets of his black sweats, his gaze skipping sharply around the vast space. Life seemed to have handed him shortcuts for everything.
His eyes locked on her. A smile twitched at the edge of his lips before he forced it away and held up his phone.
“What doeshuylmean?” he asked, glancing at the text message Sydney had sent him minutes earlier.
“Hurry up, you’re late,” she replied.
He nodded. “Very intuitive,” he said.
She ignored his sarcasm and stared at the neon yellow words emblazoned in a stylishly bold font across his black sweatshirt.
I’M A SPY
She raised a withering eyebrow at him. “Really?” she muttered.
He looked down at his sweatshirt, then back up at her. “What?” he said innocently. “It’s from Balmain’s new Fall collection.”
Sydney pushed down an urge to deck him.
