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No changing your clothes with the other person in view. No speaking once our heads hit the pillows. No Do you mind rubbing sunscreen on my back? before we head down to the beach. Absolutely no walking around in just a towel. Never—

“You look like you’re in your head,” Flynn says. He’s neatly placed his shirts and shorts into the corner armoire and is now lounging on the couch, hands interlaced behind his neck. The movement accentuates the tone of his arms, the broad swath of his palms. He’s tall enough that he has to kick his feet up on the armrest.

“Can you blame me?” I ask, shoving Sofia’s expensive pantsuits into the closet.

“Let’s get you out of it, then. Tell me what’s new with you.”

I throw him a look. “You mean, in the last forty-eight hours? Nothing notable.”

He throws me back the same look. “I’m just wondering what you’ve been up to all these years.”

It takes effort to withhold the skepticism from my glance. “I’m sure you know. If I’m in this position, the CIA must have a file on me that’s a mile long.”

“Oh, they absolutely do,” Flynn admits without pause. “Still not enough to know someone. The CIA organizes people’s lives into neat boxes. Work history, family history, any special skills…”

“For me, it’s—what?” I question. “Egg-poaching skills? Soup-making skills? That the kind of stuff you mean? I can chop those mini carrots super thin.”

Flynn considers this with a tip of his head against the pillow, blondish hair fanning against the fabric. “Usually it’s more like ‘asset speaks fluent Swahili,’ or ‘asset knows how to pilot small aircraft.’?”

I shut the closet door and zip up the final suitcase. “Yeah, I can see how those would be more strategically useful.”

Unlocking his hands, Flynn swings his legs to face me, elbows on his knees. Even hunched over like this, he seems impossibly huge. “Come on, give me something, Max. Anything. Maybe I’m a little nervous about sharing my room with someone I haven’t seen in ages.”

An actual snort comes out of me. “Good. Very believable.”

He’s still gazing my way, leaning forward with one eyebrow raised. “Random fact about yourself. As random as you’d like.”

This is so silly. And frustrating. At one point, after a summer of car trips and conversation, we knew almost everything about each other—like, how Flynn’s grandparents owned a garden center back in Texas, how his dog Ted died two summers prior and he wasn’t over it, and how (sometimes) he’d skip school and kayak down the Colorado River with Pierce and Alejandro, his two best friends. My friend Julia (aka Jules) even met him, way back when, on one of our Sunday-morning potato doughnut runs. I like him, Maxie , she whispered conspiratorially over the picnic table. I think we should keep him.

I sigh, giving in, just so we can get this over with. “Fine, okay, uh…a couple years ago, I finally tried a peanut butter and Fluff sandwich, and despite the fact that the culinary gods were rolling over in their graves, I liked it. Actually, it was borderline magical. Will that work?”

“See?” He opens up the palms of his hands. “Completely comfortable now. I’m a peanut butter and banana guy, myself. Although, one of my CIA colleagues told me about the deep-South alternative.”

“Which is?”

“Banana and mayonnaise.”

Horror flickers across my face. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Hey, I had to hear about your sleepy chicken.”

“It isn’t my sleepy chicken,” I argue, choking on a laugh. “I’m not just running around with bottles of NyQuil and chicken cutlets in my purse.”

“If you were, I think that would’ve automatically disqualified you from CIA selection. And you would’ve had a hard time explaining that at the airport…In all seriousness, while we’re here, in the suite, I’ll give you your space. I know the Italians don’t have a word for privacy—not in their native language; they just say it in English, with an accent—but I respect your boundaries.” He pauses expectantly. “Don’t you want to ask me a question?”

I know he means about himself, about what he’s been up to the last ten years. I am curious—of course I am—but this conversation’s already getting a little too friendly. Given our new temporary sleeping arrangement, it’s even more important to keep our dynamic steady. Neutral. Emotionless.

“Yeah,” I fire back, one hand on my hip, “why does Sofia hate me?”

Standing up, Flynn smooths out his pant legs until they’re completely crease-free. “What do you mean?”

For some reason, I don’t tell him about the note, tiny pieces stuffed in my pocket, just—“She gave me this look when we switched places. It was very…penetrating.”

Flynn frowns. “You know I drove her to a safe house when we swapped in the tunnel? She didn’t say anything about you. Kept quiet and answered messages on her phone.” Waltzing over to the bar, he pours himself a glass of seltzer water and tips it at me. “Listen, let’s just focus on your first outing as the PM. Get that out of the way before we worry about anything else. The schedule from the PM’s comms team says you’re due at the beach in fifteen minutes.”

“And you’ll follow me,” I supply, glad that we’re back to just business. “What’s your cover story, then?”

“Simple, another guest at the hotel.” As he speaks, he’s stripping off his linen jacket and hanging it on the back of the sofa, careful and slow. A bead of sweat trickles down the hard line of his throat; the white cotton of his shirt sticks to his chest muscles in a borderline obscene way. Can someone get this man some air-conditioning? It seems like there’s a laissez-faire attitude about the weather here: It’s hot, it’s Positano, so what? “Did you hear me?”

I blink at him. “No, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I was talking about my alias. I’m a restaurateur, scouting the area for real estate. Thought you’d like that. You can give me some recipe tips, beef up my backstory.”

“Oh yeah. Fine.”

“You just missed one hell of a pun there. Beef up?”

Distracted, I open the dresser drawer and yank out the blue-and-white one-piece swimsuit that I’ve just folded away. That’s when the hotel phone rings on the nightstand, a sharp and insistent trill. “Who’s that?”

“Don’t know,” Flynn says with the touch of a frown, strolling over to answer it. He cradles the receiver like he’s in an old detective movie, shoulder holding the phone to his ear. “Hello, yes?”

A pause.

“Mm-hmm,” he says. “Mm-hmm. That won’t be necessary. No. Don’t worry about it, I’ll tell her…Really, I can tell her…Mm-hmm, she’s— Okay, hold on. One second.” He lowers the handset, palm over the bottom so the caller can’t hear. “It’s Giorgio.”

Ah. “Okay, what does he want?”

“To speak with you about the soap.”

“All…right.”

“He’s insistent. Would you mind just hearing him out for a minute? I kind of like the guy.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I say.

“Giorgio?” Flynn says into the phone. “I’m passing you over.”

Gingerly, I take the phone, pressing the receiver to my ear, as Giorgio begins without preamble. “I feel I have made such a fool of myself, Signora Prime Minister, I am so sorry! All the talk about the soap! The soap and the goats! I have been playing it in my head, over and over and over and over, and in my head, I say, Giorgio, shhhh. Shhhh . Do not say it. And yet, I say it! My mouth, it just blub-blub-blub.” He makes a sound like his mouth is a burbling brook. “So please accept my apologies. Also, I have your brother on the line.”

I blanch. My brother?

“I will transfer you now,” Giorgio says dutifully, like it’s his great honor, and of course, I can’t say anything. Short of hanging up, all I can do is stand frozen in the suite, heart jumping, waiting for another voice down the line.

“Sofia?” The new caller’s tone is nasally, clipped, annoyed. His Scandinavian accent bursts into my ear. “Sofia, I have been trying to reach you all day, but no one would patch me through. The fact that I had to ask your communications director for the name of your hotel and dial it up like you don’t have a cell phone is embarrassing. Fillip is asking about the joint-party resolution and I need to know your answer by Monday . Monday at the latest . Can you really not speak? For Christ’s sake, Sofia, eat a lozenge. Drink some herbal tea. All right, goodbye for now.”

My palms grow clammy in the short time it takes me to hang up. “I got transferred to her brother.”

Flynn’s gaze snaps to look at me. “Jakob?”

“I forgot his name.”

“That’s fine. That’s fine. What did he say?”

“Something about a joint-party resolution.” I run my hand down my neck. “Are you sure that he doesn’t want to kill her?”

“Why would you think that?” Flynn asks, confused.

“Because it sounds like he wants to kill her.”

“I think we can very safely chalk that one up to sibling rivalry. They might not get along, but Jakob’s not a bad guy. A little high-strung, maybe, but—shake it off.” He actually shakes his shoulders in demonstration. “No unexpected phone calls or visitors from now on.”

I nod, breathing through my nose, hands on my hips. “What about the other people in and around the hotel? The ones who aren’t security?”

Flynn catches my drift. “The resort will keep the area as locked down for you as possible when it comes to paparazzi. Italian police, the CIA, and the PM’s intelligence service have all pulled the guest lists, and they’re clean. What we’re trying to ensure is that none of those guests bring a guest, someone who pays them to tag along for the day, maybe under the guise of using the pool. But ‘using the pool’ is actually code for—”

“Shanking me at the buffet table,” I finish for him, stomach a bit watery.

The corners of Flynn’s eyes crease. “Wouldn’t put it that way. That’s not going to happen.” His cell phone gives an aggravated little buzz, and he checks it, scrolling. “See? Just what I was saying. Summerland hacked the last Halverson brother’s phone fifteen minutes ago, so we’ll be able to monitor any and all communications coming out of their compound. And the CIA just got a lead about the Producer’s identity—some recent footage at a convenience store in Prague. I’ll be surprised if we even need the whole five days.” He shoves a stack of brand-new books and a bottle of sunscreen into my beach bag before grabbing a pair of baby blue swim trunks from his own luggage. “I’ll just let you…”

I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’ll get changed in the bathroom and head right down.”

“Don’t forget to keep your necklace on,” he says, tapping the base of his own throat. He has a few freckles there, at the edge of his tidy beard. “Earpiece, too.”

One thing I don’t keep on me? Sofia’s message. In the bathroom, I shove my hand into my pocket, where bits of paper rest like shrapnel. The prime minister’s words swim around my brain. Danger , she’d written. Destroy this note , she’d written. To be extra safe, I scatter the pieces into the toilet, watching them swirl—with a violent flush—down the drain.