She was silent for a long moment after that. Winter was wondering if he’d said too much when she finally sighed and looked back at him. “It’s nothing serious. Just a bit of fun for me. Connor’s nice.”
Not nice enough, apparently,Winter thought, puzzling over her words. Why was she pretending to carry on an affair with someone she wasn’t actually seeing? What was fun about that? “He seems like it,” he said aloud instead.
She smiled a little. “My mother would have liked him.”
Her mother? Inwardly, Winter perked up. Sauda and Niall had told him that they knew almost nothing about Penelope’s mother, and here she was, mentioning the woman. “Would have?” Winter asked.
“She died a while ago,” Penelope replied.
The silence settled back in around them. There was real grief in her answer, remnants of what sounded like genuine love.
“I’m sorry,” Winter murmured.
She gave him a small smile at that, and Winter felt the trust build between them, the relaxing of Penelope’s shoulders that seemed to mean she was relieved to confide in him. The realization sent guilt coursing through him.
“She would have liked to see me keep something that was just mine,” Penelope went on.
“I’m sure she would have wanted you to have everything you desire,” Winter offered gently.
“Doyouhave everything you desire?” she asked him.
Sydney flashed through his mind again, her dark blue eyes and silvery dress and bare back. The thought of her in this moment surprised him, and the unexpected leap in his heart must have registered on his face, because Penelope tilted her head thoughtfully at him.
“No,” he answered honestly.
She looked back down into her mug. Her expression was soft and vulnerable now, and she looked even more fragile than he remembered from their first meeting.
“Then I hope we both get what we really want,” she said.
He put down his mug and faced her. “Look, I…” he started to say, searching for the right words.
And then, in that moment of hesitation, he noticed her flinch slightly toward the window, as if she’d seen some kind of movement on the street. He glanced with her.
There, he saw a dark figure standing on the other side of the street, crouched behind a stone gate.
What caught his eye was the faintest glint of something metallic pointed in their direction. And suddenly, his mind raced back to the lessons he’d gotten with Sydney at Panacea’s training center.
“Get down!”
He flung himself at Penelope right before she could make a sound. Just as he barreled into her, he heard the shot crack through the glass window.
It was the subtlest sound—such a small, quietpingthat he thought at first that he’d imagined it.
Penelope didn’t make a sound. He immediately scrambled up—for a terrifying second, he thought that maybe the bullet had hit her after all. But then he saw her stir where she lay stricken on the couch, her eyes wide and skin ghost-white. At once, something seemed to come alive in her. She rolled to the floor, hitting the carpet at the same time he did.
His eyes darted to a hole in the couch cushions, inches away from where they’d both been sitting. His gaze swung to the window, where a tiny, perfect circle was in the glass, where it had been drilled right through.
For a moment, all he could do was let the reality sink in. That somebody wanted Penelope dead. That everything could seem to be going right one minute and then spiral completely out of his control the next.
And he had the sense that their mission had just taken a turn out of his hands.
21
Pivot
Not until Sydney managed to find her way back onto the streets of London did the force of everything hit her—the realization that Eli Morrison, the man they had been sent here to arrest, had just been murdered on board his own yacht.
And even though she hadn’t been the one to kill him, she felt like his blood was staining her hands, that she had been the one to compromise their mission. She could still hear the sickening gurgle of his destroyed throat in her mind, see the recognition in his eyes as he stared wide-eyed at her.
