Page 21

21

Eva

The first time I see him again, he’s in the gallery. He’s studying a painting. Not like he’s judging it, but like it might be judging him. He’s dressed in a Tom Ford suit, like the one he wore in the pictures Sherri slid toward me in a dark bar in Dublin. He’s got a new pair of glasses. These ones aren’t crooked but they have the same uneven lenses. He’s still half-blind.

I keep waiting for him to see me, like I think he’ll be able to sense me.

My heart is beating so hard.

The walls of the palace practically throb with it as I follow him down the hall. Past the King’s Suite, past the State Apartments, into the Hall of Mirrors, where I see him over and over. His image echoes in my eyes.

I’m following Jonathan through the Palace of Versailles because he’s my next assignment, my mark. He’s been classified as extremely lethal.

“I don’t want you to kill him yet, you understand?” Sherri told me on the phone. “This is reconnaissance. We need to come up with a plan. This guy is beyond dangerous.”

Jonathan from the train, with the bent glasses and the motion sickness, is the most dangerous mark I’ve ever been given.

I want to prove myself, as a woman in a man’s world. I want to show the agency that I can take this job. And then I see him again and I think: It’s Jonathan from the train. My Jonathan.

With the pale skin and the stiff shoulders, the way his blue eyes hooked on mine. The way they said to me: Everything that happens now is just between us.

Everything.

This is going to be really, really hard.