Chapter 3
Julian and I met in Vegas. City of vice, the debauched glitz of it all, that glittering false promise of a life-changing win.
When I think back on it, maybe it was that place, that moment in time that glamoured me.
Because I remember feeling different there, different than I had before, different than I would after.
I was new on the job, my first time in the field.
I’d just completed a year of training with Nora and her team—weapons, martial arts, coding, social engineering, breaking and entering.
It was grueling, twenty-four seven instruction.
But also, more attention, support, a certain kind of love than I had experienced before.
The kind of love where people believe you can do things you never knew you could do.
“You’re ready,” Nora told me after my last exam. “More than ready. You’re the best I’ve ever seen.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“I don’t.” A rare smile, a firm hand on the shoulder. “Just be careful. The field is different—more variables, less margin for error, a chaos factor. Follow your instincts.”
There are so many rumors about Nora; no one knows what’s true.
Former CIA. Her parents were KGB agents living in Washington, DC; she didn’t even know she was Russian until she was eighteen.
Disgraced Special Forces. Lesbian. Trans.
FBI sharpshooter. It didn’t matter to me who she was, where she came from, or what she’d done.
She saved me. Or so it seemed at the time.
Maybe if that first assignment had been anywhere else—Tampa or Detroit, Bangkok or Paris—it wouldn’t have happened.
I’d spent the last year at Nora’s isolated property (she called it the Farm), and my world had grown small.
Learning, eating, sleeping. Everything regimented, not a single second to myself.
The private jet, the limo ride from the small, secluded airport through Vegas, a city of lights, glowing, seeming to offer everything on a platter.
By the time I arrived at the Wynn, I was already starry eyed.
He was waiting for me in the honeymoon suite—that was our narrative, newlyweds in Vegas.
He was a high roller, a big shot venture capitalist always looking for the next big win.
I was a fitness influencer with a hundred thousand followers (thanks to Nora’s tech department).
Our target was the head of some data-gathering firm.
I had a digital file on my phone—headshot, bio, likes and dislikes, not much else.
He and his wife were swingers. Their debauched weekends in Vegas were well known.
When I keyed my way into our (sick, crazy, omg) suite and Julian greeted me in the foyer, he started to laugh. It was a warm, friendly sound, not mocking or derisive.
“Oh my god, you have Nora written all over you,” he said, taking my bags, setting them down.
I couldn’t help but gaze, awestruck, around the room: plush sectional, big-screen television, full dining table, floor-to-ceiling windows with an unobstructed view of the city, already glittering as afternoon turned to evening.
Through the double doors a giant bed. In my life, I’d never been anywhere so luxe, not even close.
Nora’s house had seemed like a castle to me. But this was beyond.
“How old are you?” he asked, watching me with an amused smile.
“How old are you?” I countered.
“Never mind,” he said, lifting his palms. “I don’t want to know. Look. Are you ready for this?”
He moved in close.
“Of course,” I said, sounding confident, even though the only things I’d killed so far were the deer on Nora’s property.
It’s not that different, Nora had promised.
I thought of the doe I’d held in my arms as she bled out.
I couldn’t imagine anything feeling worse than that, her dark eye staring into mine, blood pooling at my knees.
After all, animals are innocent. People, not so much.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Sure you are.”
Julian. He says it was love at first sight, that he saw me and knew we were meant to be together.
What do I remember about that moment? That I was young and scared, that I was about to do a thing I didn’t really understand.
That his hair looked like it had been drawn by ink pen, that his jaw was stylishly stubbled, that his eyes were this weirdly faceted hazel.
That he dropped to one knee and pulled a velvet box from his pocket and showed me the biggest diamond—okay, the only diamond—I had ever seen.
“Alice,” he said. Not my name. “Will you marry me? You know, for like the next seventy-two hours.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Was I going to wake up from this silly dream? “I will.”
He slid the ring on my finger. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl on prom night. And then he rose, took me into his powerful arms, and kissed me. Tender at first, then bolder. And everything inside me turned to ice cream.
“There’s got to be chemistry for this to look authentic,” he said softly. “What do you think? Do we have it?”
For me, it wasn’t love at first sight. It was love at first kiss.
“Yeah,” I whispered, embarrassingly breathless. “I think so.”
He pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes.
Then he pulled away, all business. “Okay,” he said, moving over to the coffee table, where a neat stack of files and an open laptop sat. “Let’s go over the plan.”
I didn’t want to tell him that it was the only time I’d ever been kissed.
Why am I thinking about him? That first night, and all the nights that came after, when I felt safe and loved, seen as a woman and not a child, for the first time in my life. I guess I get maudlin around the holidays too.
Now, I’m pulling up to the deserted strip mall far outside town.
It’s isolated, the area studded with abandoned warehouses and factories, the last town more than a half an hour south.
Gun shop. Liquor store. A topless bar. All shuttered, long out of business.
As the factories failed, so did the businesses that served the workers.
I park my car around back and step outside, listen to the wind.
It’s bitterly cold, sky a misty gray black, bare trees etching the landscape.
At the back entrance to the gun shop, I push in through a heavy door that squeaks on its hinges.
The concrete floor is gritty beneath my boots.
The space looks as if it’s been looted after the zombie apocalypse, shelves toppled, a box of ammo spilled and scattered across the ground, holes punched in the walls exposing bare wood studs and insulation.
I know there are eyes on me. Pinhole cameras activated as I stepped inside.
In the far corner of the room, behind the only shelving unit still standing, is a shiny metal door, beside which a keypad is mounted.
I enter my identification code. Once. Twice.
No access.
I breathe back a flutter of panic.
Then my phone pings. Hey, sorry. System glitch. I’ll let you in.
It’s Buz, Nora’s longtime assistant. (And some say lover, but again just another Nora rumor.
She’s an enigma wrapped inside a riddle.) If you want to talk to Nora, you call Buz.
Ageless, refrigerator size, stone faced, he taught me how to fight a man twice my size and maybe not win but at least get away.
Nora calls him her man Friday. The reference was lost on me until recently.
I have a soft spot for Buz. Nora’s all hard edges, unyielding consequences.
Buz was always willing to pick me up, dust me off, and let me try again when I face-planted.
Which was often in training. I would never dream of letting Nora see me cry, but Buz was good for a bear hug when things got rough.
The door unlocks with a loud whirr-click, and I step into the elevator, then stand and grip the railing as it goes down and down into the subbasement where the offices of Nora’s firm, the Company, are housed.
I’ve come unarmed because those are the rules.
But because of last night, Nora’s text, Julian’s words of warning from long ago ringing in my ears, I am feeling terribly unsafe.
“Have you ever taken a good look at your contract?” he asked that first night as we lay in bed.
The truth was no. I had honestly just signed anything Nora put in front of me, so naive, so desperate was I to please her then.
I had glanced through the pages, intimidated by the legal language, pretending not to be, and put my scrawl on the dotted line, rewarded by a wide smile from Nora, a warm hand on my shoulder. Welcome to the Company, sweetie.
“Did Nora ever tell you about the termination agreement?”
Silence was my answer.
“The termination agreement,” he repeated as if I hadn’t heard him. “That if you get caught, or fuck up, or endanger the firm in any way, the Company will end you without warning.”
“You mean fire, disavow?”
“Right. Sure. At the Company, they call it the kill clause.”
I experienced a cold dawning. “Do you know anyone who’s been terminated?”
“I mean, I have known people who are now . . . just gone? It’s not like there’s an interoffice memo and a funeral. Nora chooses carefully, in case you haven’t noticed. When we disappear, no one comes looking.”
It made a brutal kind of sense.
“All I’m saying is make sure you have an insurance policy, a bargaining chip if things go sideways.”
“Like what?”
“For example, I keep a journal of every job, everything I know about the Company. Multiple copies in various locations. I can use that to negotiate my freedom, when the time comes. And if anything happens to me, I have a contact who will put those documents in the right hands.”
I nodded, but inside I felt an arrogant flush. I was Nora’s favorite. She loved me. I didn’t need an insurance policy. Anyway, that’s how it seemed to me at the time. But maybe that’s how you feel when you’re a rescue. Anything that’s not harm looks like love.
Buz is waiting for me outside Nora’s office, standing with arms folded, legs wide—a cop’s stance, a principal, a prison guard. But he smiles as I approach. He’s a beast, all muscle and heavy brow, dark gaze. But there’s something secretly cuddly about him beneath the hard exterior.
“She’s waiting for you,” he says, putting a strong hand on my shoulder.
“Why is this such a big deal? I made a judgment call.”
He shrugs, gives me an eye roll. “Talk to the boss. She knows the big picture. We’re just pieces on her board.”
He swings open the door, and I step inside.