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teakwood blinds at the night outside, dark and cold. No sign of life on the street below...or in the window across the way. “If you guys are so concerned about me, why isn’t one of you here yet?”
    “Tobias is on his way to you.”
    “
What?
” Her other older brother—the fussy lawyer—was probably the last family member she’d expect to show up on her doorstep in Chicago. “Why?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve got trouble.”
    “Then why...why didn’t you call my cell?” Her cell was secure, but anything they said on the landline could be overheard, and likely was, given her storied past. It was why Casey had demanded she get a landline in the first place, so anyone listening would witness Beth being a normal—capital “N” normal—civilian when she spoke to the cable company or one of her coworkers at the Institute.
    “Because I want them to know we know.” Casey’s voice was brutal and as cold as the weather outside her apartment. “A hit’s been put on you.”
    She froze, her stomach cramping. “You really
are
in Belfast, aren’t you?” she whispered as everything clicked into place. Tobias flying to see her. Human footprints on Bob and Keith’s balcony. The dark window across the street.
    Wait.
Not so dark, not anymore. Flashes of light, the kind that signaled discharge by a firearm, lit up the bay window that hadn’t shown any sign of life in nearly forty-eight hours.
His
window. “Shit.”
    The Beretta was back in her hand before she took her next breath, dropping the cordless phone to the rug on her brother’s concerned shouts. Not bothering to find shoes, she dashed down the stairs and out into the street—an empty street that held new menace, every shifting shadow a possible threat—in nothing but her socks. The freezing winter air cut through her thin blouse, sharpening her senses as she sprinted up the shoveled sidewalk.
    She had to save her friendly neighborhood spy.

Chapter Two
    The front door handle depressed with a quick
click
, and Beth moved into the dark stairwell. The turn-of-the-century limestone mansion with its gorgeous wrought iron detailing had been rehabbed into a nouveau three-flat much like hers, meaning that the door to her left was the entrance to the main-floor apartment. Taking the stairs as silently as possible on feet frozen from her run, she ascended to the third floor.
    Routine was one thing, but this necessary stealth, this adrenaline rush...it was a different beast entirely, shoving her back into her past with all the subtlety of a bomb blast.
    Her palms grew slick when she reached the top of the stairwell and saw his open door, her pulse a heavy drumbeat in her ears. Three seconds. She had three seconds to get her brain and body under control. No freaking out or flashbacks allowed, not when she had no idea what waited for her inside that apartment.
    One
.
Two.
    She might be out of the family business, but she refused to stand by and watch lives be lost when she had the power to save them.
    Three.
    Keeping her back to the wall as she entered the open-plan living space, Beth gave her eyes a moment to adjust before taking in the black shapes of his oversized couch and large club chair facing a sleek, wall-mounted television. The dining table to her right would seat six comfortably, and on its surface sat a closed laptop and a briefcase that had fallen open on its side. Papers spilled from it onto the floor, next to a forgotten suit jacket.
    Other out-of-place details caught her eye as she cleared the front room. The huge print of Manet’s
Music in the Tuileries
over the fireplace hung askew, and a plush faux-fur cushion had fallen halfway off the piano bench in front of a baby grand. The chic, moneyed interior, so clearly provided by a professional decorator, lent few clues as to the personality of the man who’d lived here for the past six months.
    There was no noise in the place, nothing at all. Even the soft hum of heat through