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Greenwich, London

“If you can believe it”—Julia leaned forward while pulling the bodice of her red evening gown up over the curves that were threatening to escape it—“this is tonight’s signature cocktail.

These gents are calling it ‘The English Robin.’ There’s no one more sentimental about a Britain that never existed than landed club lads.

” Julia grabbed her own English Robin, which she’d set down on one of the high tables, and knocked it back in one go. “Fuck, but she’s tasty, though.”

They were on a patio whose classical colonnade overlooked the Thames.

Yardley breathed in the gray, with its cold, oily mist of rain, relishing the brisk air on her bare chest. She wore her tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to the navel.

Her short, severely cut salt-and-pepper wig was hot, as were her drapey wool trousers. “How’s our girl doing?”

Yardley’s London cover, Max Konstantopoulos, was one she’d used for years.

It had been easy for Julia to secure an invite to tonight’s banquet, thrown by Miller’s club, for Max, an intimidating lesbian black-market intermediary.

It didn’t hurt that Julia had been embedded in the club as its receptionist for the last nine months.

Three-quarters of the members were half in love with her kittenish-blonde persona, which gave her access to some of the biggest secrets in the world.

“Do I want to steal her from you, or do I want to be her?” Julia asked. “That’s the real question.”

Yardley raised an eyebrow. “She’s not mine yet.”

Julia made a move to grab another cocktail from a passing tray, then thought better of it when she noticed Yardley’s still-full glass. “Everyone thought you were just making her up. Like a girlfriend you met at camp and lives far away so you don’t look like a big knob.”

“No one thought that,” Yardley said primly.

“But you didn’t know she was Tabasco! You said she only knew your cover! And here she’s one of us. Some spy you are!”

Yardley wondered how many more times she was going to hear that particular dig. Certainly for the rest of her life. Depending on what kind of business the agency was up to in its less conventional units, possibly into the afterlife.

“To answer your question”—Julia took Yardley’s drink from her and drank it down between breaths—“Daphne Sullivan is the belle of the ball.”

Yardley was not surprised. KC had performed at a level of consistent excellence throughout the mission, and today was no exception.

What did surprise Yardley was her reaction to KC’s performance, which was to be just as consistently impressed, delighted, and aroused by her breathtaking competence.

Except for that dreadful moment when Dr. Brown had jump-scared her at Mirabel’s, Yardley was having a fantastic time.

Yardley was jubilant that KC was finally out of the basement and getting to do the work she should have been able to do all along.

“These men are so excited to have the salty American who probably stole the device show up at their shindig, they’re acting like it was engraved on the invitation,” Julia said, glancing over her shoulder at the party.

“Watching them swarm around her, likely dumping a war brief’s worth of intel into her cute little ears, has got me emerald green with jealousy.

Once you go in, Max, it’s going to be a mosh pit of piping-hot goss while they try to figure out if you’re there to negotiate a deal and who for. ”

Yardley laughed. “I’ve missed you, Jules. What about Miller?”

“The driver reports that he’s still waiting outside Miller’s girlfriend’s daughter’s private school, where the girl is performing her recital. He’ll ping me once they’re ten minutes away.”

CIA officer David Miller had been ignoring their signals all day.

Either he had his own agenda—probably bad—or he was part of Dr. Brown’s nihilistic army.

Whenever Yardley thought about pregnant Kris in an over-air-conditioned, dim room in Sweden, coding against the wind while David Miller carried on his cushy life as a deep embed in a London social club, her pique dialed up another notch.

God help the world if there were ever a general strike by everyone who wasn’t a white cis-het male.

The planet would wobble off its orbit and tumble across the galaxy in free fall.

“Any sign of Dr. Brown?” she asked.

Ordinarily, Yardley loved a good honey trap, but she had every one of her antennae up for this one. If the Palace Club’s dinner party drew out Dr. Brown, the only option would be to secure him. Anything else would likely incite him to detonate the device.

After the time she and KC had spent together last night—the questions and the kisses that ruptured Yardley’s last shreds of self-protective resistance and left her defenseless against the enormity of her feelings—she felt confident that she would personally take Dr. Brown apart with her bare hands if he attempted to harm one hair on KC Nolan’s beautiful head.

“No sign of him,” Julia said. “And I haven’t heard a thing, either. Makes me suspicious, taken with the fact that Miller has been ignoring you. Something’s up.”

“Then we find out what it is,” Yardley said. “I’m ready, if you’ll escort me in, Miss Taffy Burton.”

“I love your Eurotrash accent. It makes me feel like a college girl abroad all over again.”

Yardley laughed and took her arm.

In the low, incandescent light of the chandeliers hanging from an airy domed ceiling, every woman’s jewelry sparkled, and every man’s tuxedo blurred into an expensive shadow.

The air smelled like champagne and the umami aromas floating off the circulating small bites, with an undercurrent of the Ambroxan, amber, and powdery scents of expensive perfume.

The entrance of Max Konstantopoulos created the desired stir. The murmur of conversation dropped low enough that she could hear renowned cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s mournful, postmodern improvisations drifting over from where she played on a marble dais in the corner.

Yardley grounded herself into her polished wingtips and stalked toward the club president, who owned slightly less land than the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds but had a great deal more ready cash due to lucrative investments in gambling apps.

He watched her approach under a hedge of white eyebrows while sipping his tumbler of scotch.

“Ms. Konstantopoulos. Rumored you’d be joining us, and I couldn’t imagine why until that American strolled through the doors without an invitation.”

“Why would you correlate my arrival with your party crasher?” Yardley lifted a finger and was handed a champagne from a server’s tray.

“My understanding is she’s here to advertise her wares to any resident arms dealers.” He lifted a shaggy brow, indicating his knowledge of Max’s line of work.

“Always straight to the point.” Yardley lifted her flute. “I notice you haven’t removed either one of us.”

“I’ve become indulgent at my great age, but behave yourself.”

“That’s not what you really want.” Yardley caught the gleam of KC’s silver minidress across the room. “Let me know if you’re interested in buying anything.”

She strode away, the ambient conversations rising in volume around her. She had nearly made it to a massive bronze plinth holding an arrangement of orchids and roses where KC was talking animatedly to a member of the prime minister’s cabinet when she was touched on the elbow.

She turned to see Jack Tremblay, the Canadian spy.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

He frowned. “I would have thought you would be glad to see me.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re on the same side! My god. I saved your girl’s bacon back in Lidingo when you folks were gagging for a diversion.”

“Canadians don’t have real bacon.”

“Is there some reason for the lack of congeniality?” Jack raised his eyebrows, free of smeared gel this time.

Yardley sighed. Her favorite thing about the Max Konstantopoulos cover was that she did not have to be polite to anyone, and she certainly didn’t have to flirt with Jack Tremblay.

“You’re right.” She eyed him intently. “We’re on the same side, and you were useful in Sweden.

That nearly makes up for the Sisters’ failure to prevent our asset’s abduction off the street in Toronto.

Nearly.” Yardley tilted her head. “So what do you have for me?”

Jack’s face fell. “You mean what intel do I have.”

Yardley suppressed at least two dozen sarcastic and cutting comments that left her mouth too cold to melt butter. Being Max was so relaxing . It offered her the rare opportunity to set aside literally everything she’d learned from her mama about how girls should behave.

“Right,” he said. “Not quite yet. Just got here myself. I’ve not even really circulated.”

Yardley started walking away.

“But let me know if you need anything!” he called after her.

The politico who KC had been talking with kissed KC’s cheek and moved off, leaving her by the plinth alone.

Gorgeous.

“Were you good at fifth-grade basketball?” Yardley asked, leaning against the plinth, taking in KC’s muscled legs in stilettos and how the short, backless silver lamé draped precariously over a very small area of her body and made Yardley, or maybe Max, want very bad things.

“Who’s good at fifth-grade basketball?” KC moved closer, and they both turned their bodies toward the guests as if they were an audience.

Which they were.

“I was vicious at fifth-grade basketball,” KC said.

“I yelled at the refs for not calling everyone’s blatant double dribbling, and I had a long and elaborate free throw ritual involving multiple hand signs and spitting.

But I was a forty-five-pound, three-and-a-half-foot-tall feral animal, so no. Not really good .”

“Are you having a nice evening?” Yardley moved closer, relishing her cover because Max Konstantopoulos would not hesitate to move too close and look at Daphne Sullivan like she wanted to devour her.