One

Greenwich Village

Manhattan

December 30

8:29 a.m.

Brianna Tildascow was shocked awake by a bass-heavy club beat pinballing through her skull. Her eyes came to focus on a framed poster of a silicone-infused woman lounging on a Lamborghini.

They still made those posters? They still made guys who hung them?

Yep. And that guy had a bass-heavy club beat as his ringtone.

She fell back onto her pillow. There were her mother’s soft features, shiny blond curls and big blue eyes. So perfect, so delicate, so her mother…

…staring back from a sex mirror over the bed.

At age 33.

This was going to be an epic walk of shame.

“Absolutely. Of course, sir,” said Mister Right Now into his phone as he fretted over a mark on his silk sheets.

She’d gone home with this guy? Was the club that desolate last night? And was he really flexing his biceps while holding his phone?

“Yes sir, right away.” He ended the call and whipped his eyebrows into a dramatic frenzy. “I have to go.”

“Okay.” First good news of the morning. Now to start the esteem-choking process of gathering clothes. But that was gonna require the world to stand still.

“It’s a national emergency.”

“Alright,” she muttered. She’d faked enough last night.

 “The thing about working for the CIA is that your job never stops, day or night. So the vigilance can never stop.”

“What do you do for the CIA?” she asked. Of course she’d snagged the zipper of her open for business miniskirt.

“I’m a courier.”

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