Slowly, Diana slid back the paper door, gliding inside from the forest, this temple smelling of the same wood as the trees she’d been hiding between.
One of the slumped figures was the woman that had approached the Readers on the stairs. Her black eyes were frozen open, staring down at the ground, and a singular streak of blood cut down her face. The other was a man, not sitting up but instead laying across the wood, not able to hold himself up after death like the women.
In the middle, Yoonah took a large gasping breath.
Diana rushed toward her, but she didn’t touch her. First, because she was unsavable, the bullet right through her face, under her eye. Second, because Diana couldn’t afford to be incriminated right now—she couldn’t get any of this blood on her or spread her DNA anywhere in this oncoming crime scene.
She took gloves out of her back pocket, slipping them over both of her hands.
“Yoonah,” Diana tried.
The woman struggled, her breathing thick with the sound of building blood in her throat.
“Who are they after?” Diana asked.
Her wide blank eyes turned to her, looking at her with confusion, then realization and then nothing—nothing at all. The light dimmed, and Yoonah went still. Had she remained a silhouette, Diana wasn’t sure if she would be able to tell that she was dead. She had such a graceful motionless quiet about her. Her legs still crossed, leaning against the wooden ledge of the temple behind her, the light from outside carving through the paper windows and shining off her manicured fingernails, wrapped around both of her knees.
Chapter 2
Amita Voss
London, England
She could have been so much more. There was a time when she thought they would write about her or if not about her, about the things that she did, the problems that she solved—in the news, on TV, letters passing between terrorists, warning each other about Amita Voss. But that wasn’t the way it went. Life doesn’t always turn out how you expect it to or how you want it to. Not that being the vice-chief of MI6 wasn’t what she wanted; Amita would take what she had with humility and grace. She was too old to get what she wanted. Too old and too tired to go back out in the field and take down all that opposed her.
With a quick swipe of her thumbs, Amita sent a text.
The laptop in front of her was filled with unanswered emails. Perhaps, this recent reflection on the past, ever since the Readers, was the reason why she’d been unable to focus on her day-to-day work. She had put trust in Zabójca, and that had clearly been a mistake. Amber had failed as well, though. This wouldn’t all fall on her shoulders.
Perhaps, if she’d hired the American, Diana Weick, if she’d put some trust in her, things could have unfolded differently—less people would be dead. But part of her knew, with absolute certainty, that the Readers would have found a way to burn up those American officials with that stolen UCAV or without.
They were writing about her in the papers and on the internet. But it was bad press. Terrible press. They accused her of being one of the worst vice-chiefs in MI6 history after the murder of Dominic Ratanake right on her doorstep. Amita couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what they would write if they knew about the failed interception of the UCAV controller in Dubai a few weeks ago. Or of the other failures from her past. Those she could take some responsibility for.
But that American lieutenant? That was on Chief Harlow. The bastard who couldn’t even bring himself to work out of Vauxhall for more than an afternoon at a time, spending most of his time with his girlfriends in the Maldives.
She sipped on the ice water at the edge of her slate-gray desk. Vauxhall Court had been wrapped in a quiet shame over the last few weeks, and it was finally starting to ease up, agents getting more comfortable walking through the halls once again.
There was a soft knock on the frosted glass door.
“Come in,” she called, standing up from her desk, straightening her black blazer—the wrinkles at the base of her fingernails reminding her that she had been out of hand lotion for almost a month.
Idris Amber entered the office.
“I got your text,” he said as he plopped himself into one of the armchairs, facing himself toward the window that overlooked the River Thames.
“I wanted to check in with you on your first day back,” Amita said, leaning on the desk behind her, looking him over. His burns had healed nicely; the doctors had grafted him up like an experiment in desperate need of reviving. She took a few steps toward him, her long legs and snakeskin boots stretching out across the carpet. With one pull, she yanked down his blazer and started to undo his button-up shirt.
“Okay,” Amber said. “I guess the boundaries conversation with HR didn’t really sink in.”
She ignored him, pulling his shirt down to check his arm. The scars crisscrossed over his olive-toned skin, reaching all the way up his neck in uneven patches, cutting off at his jaw with one more scar across his cheekbone.
“You’re lucky Weick wrapped you up with those damp scarves,” Amita said. Satisfied with her inspection, she took a step back.
Re-doing the buttons on his navy collared shirt, Amber said, “Yeah. Doctors said she saved my arm if not my life.”
“Have you gotten the chance to thank her?”
“Not formally…” Amber sighed, pulling the blazer back over his shoulder. “Not properly.”
“Do you know where she is?”
The corners of his mouth pulled up into a grin as he pushed black curls out of his
