he ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the corner, a relic from British colonial days, echoed in the silence of my father’s office. He’d been stewing as he worked for twenty minutes, one of his favorite tactics for drawing out a punishment. I stood on the carpet, supposedly to consider the error of my ways, but I had no regrets. The only difference between the girl in the marketplace and me was simple geography.

The room was appropriately grand for the office of a United States ambassador. It could also be shrugged off as impersonal, with very few items belonging to my dad on display. With a new posting every two years or so, he deemed it imperative to travel light.

On his desk sat a beautiful black and white photo of my mother, a smiling Italian woman who was nothing but a hazy collection of stories in my mind. He also had a bronze camel paperweight presented to him by a former prime minister of Madagascar, and a prized chess set he’d won in a heated match with the late South African president, Nelson Mandela.

A detective trying to analyze the personality of Joseph Collins would have little to go on.

“You can’t rescue every child in every country,” he said, breaking into my thoughts. His pale coloring was no match for the noonday sun, and today’s outing to meet with a council of warlords had left him flushed. “Remember what happened in Yemen?” He meant to be stern, but there was a note of compassion in his voice.

“You see a pattern, I see a problem-solver,” I replied. “Who knows what would have happened if those camel jackers had gotten hold of her?”

He cast me a scolding glare, but I didn’t back down. Those guys deserved to be called every nasty slur in the book.

“You probably saved her life,” he admitted. “But you’ve also just complicated yours. Those men will not forget what you’ve done. The streets are no longer safe for you, even with Benson and your mandatory security detail.”

I plopped down in one of the chairs fronting his desk. “I know, but come on. I’ve heard what you were doing at seventeen, and you sure weren’t walking around with a team of armed guards.” He’d grown up wild and undisciplined on the streets of Boston until his parents threw up their hands and sent him to military school.

“That was a lifetime ago,” he said, impatience creeping in. “Hell, even Pakistan of ten years ago was a different world. Do you think the new rules don’t apply to you simply because you don’t like them?”

“Somebody’s got to stand up to the religious police who want to take this place back to the Dark Ages,” I said. “That girl is somebody’s daughter, too.”

His expression softened. “Maybe it’s time we rethink this life,” he said, but that’s as far as he got before we both jumped at my name being bellowed from somewhere within the embassy.

“Riley!” We both knew the voice, and worse, that tone.

“Save me,” I begged.

He turned back to the computer screen with a sigh. “Nope. I can’t keep you in line. Maybe he can do something with you.” He glanced at me again over his wire-rimmed glasses. With his wilted white polo shirt and wrinkled khakis, he was more like a forgetful English professor than a player on the international stage. “Go meet your fate.”

“Fat lot of good you are,” I muttered, rising to my feet.

“Riley!” I was out in the hall when the summons came again, this time echoing up the enormous marble staircase. I could envision the blood vessels popping out on Benson’s wide forehead as he hunted me down.

“I’m coming,” I called out, defeated.

Benson stood at the bottom of the next flight of steps with arms crossed and lips compressed into a narrow line. The nostrils of his crooked nose, the result of being broken one too many times, flared with anger. The white button-down he wore on duty barely contained his hulking frame, and I paused two steps up so I could meet our resident giant face to face. I’m not short, but he topped out at six-foot-five.

His Australian accent was as thick as the day he and my dad met on a joint military mission decades ago. They’d become close friends, and after my mom’s death Benson had signed on permanently as my dad’s security chief – and my unofficial jailor.

“Bloody hell! What were you thinking?” He raked a meaty hand across the bristle of his closely cropped hair. It had once been jet black, but now it was liberally sprinkled with gray. “I know you can handle yourself, but what is the first rule of fighting?”

“To avoid a fight. But Benson—”

“And going out without your security detail? After what happened in Yemen? Do I need to put a blasted bell around your neck?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but in all honesty my excuses were totally weak. He was right. Once again I’d been overly confident and foolish, and I really had no defense. But what did he expect? My only friends were guys like Martinez and Brady, who worked under Benson. There were no girls my age to hang out with, most of my shopping was done online, and my entertainment was limited to books or my computer.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “It won’t happen again.” Since I would most likely have a price on my head after today’s run in, it was an easy promise to make.

He regarded me suspiciously. “Just like that? The girl who’d rather die than admit she’s wrong just apologized?”

I shrugged. “What I did was wrong.”

The badass melted. “Oh, darlin’ girl, you scared the hell out of me today. What if something had happened? Why do you take such awful risks?”

“It would have been fine if it hadn’t been for those jerks,” I said, unable to stay repentant for long. “I know this city, Benson, and I know these people.”

“No, you don’t,” he said. “We are divided by much more than a flag and twenty-foot walls.”

“Only if we want to be! How will they ever come to know us if all we ever do is drive past them in armored vehicles?”

It was true there was an element of danger on the streets; beneath the mask of a modern city there lived a people in turmoil. But it was also a place where the world’s best fried pakoras and spicy chai were as close as the nearest café, the hours of the day could be marked by the melodious cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, and holidays found thousands joyously tossing food to the birds and fishes.

He growled in frustration. “How can a girl raised in every hot spot from here to Egypt be so ignorant about the world?”

“Not ignorant,” I disagreed, “just not afraid. There is a difference.”

“Not if it gets you killed,” he said. “You can speak their language, you can dance in their homes, but you will never be one of them.”

I had no comeback because he was right. As much as I yearned to belong to the world outside our gates, it was too dangerous, for them and for me. People would notice if I spent too much time with any particular family, and neighbors would talk. Gossip reaching the ears of close-minded men could mean trouble, and I couldn’t do that to the kindly people I’d met. It left me in the lonely position of outsider, never allowed any true friends.

Benson gave me a reluctant smile, probably debating whether he was done being angry. “Are you hungry?”

I expelled a breath and nodded. If he was thinking about food, we were good again.

“Then let’s go downstairs, and see what Nadira has to eat. Did you really take down three of them?” He hooked an arm around my shoulders, and by the time we’d reached the kitchen, his face was suffused with pride as I regaled him with all the gory details.

The girl’s name was Farida, and she was an orphan. Her school had been firebombed last year and though her uncle had forbidden it, she’d been attending classes held in secret in a teahouse basement.

“The uncle has agreed to claim he married her off to some distant cousin,” my father said a few days later over lunch in the embassy’s communal dining room. No one would question it, I thought with a shiver, because child marriages were not uncommon in this part of the world.

“The rainy day fund sure took a hit, though,” Benson grumbled. “That bugger of an uncle bargained like the girl was the bloody Queen of Sheba.”

“What happens to her now?” I dug into the vegetable korma before me, one of my favorite dishes. Our chef Nadira had been going out of her way to serve foods I loved ever since the incident in the marketplace. At least someone was happy with me.

“A relief organization out of London picked her up about an hour ago. They’ll get her to England and place her with a sympathetic Pakistani family.” Benson picked up his iced tea and held it up for a toast. “To new beginnings.”

We all clinked our glasses and echoed the sentiment.

“Mr. Ambassador?” Mrs. Parks, my dad’s middle-aged executive secretary, approached. “There’s a State Department envoy here to see you. I put her in your office.” Her eyes cut in my direction. “She said it’s about Riley.”

Dad and Benson immediately locked gazes. This could only mean trouble.

“Thanks, Carol,” my dad said. “We’ll be right there.”

As the clicks of the secretary’s sensible heels retreated, I squirmed under the stares of the two men. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. I mean,” I said, backtracking, “nothing you don’t already know about.”

I sat through the rest of lunch with the air of the condemned, barely tasting the food. Whatever punishment there was to be handed down for my lapse in judgment had arrived. Disgraced diplomats were usually transferred to the most miserable outposts, but how much worse could it get than a country on the verge of tearing itself apart? Though I personally loved Pakistan, it sure as hell wasn’t Paris.

Benson led the way to the executive wing and surprisingly, into the ambassador’s offices. He didn’t usually sit in on my dad’s meetings, but then I normally was not the topic of discussion.

The woman taking tea at the small conference table stood at our approach. About the same age as my father, her round face had the serious look of a woman too busy to bother with makeup. She must have come directly from the airport because no sane person would wear the navy wool suit she had on in this heat.

She thrust out her hand to my dad, gripping his in an efficient greeting. “Mr. Ambassador, I’m Natalie Abramowitz with the Washington bureau. I apologize for turning up uninvited.”

“Natalie, please call me Joe.” Eliminating titles was a negotiating tactic meant to bring both sides together quickly, and my dad did it unconsciously.

“And you must be Riley,” she said, sizing me up in much the same way Nadira did when buying a leg of lamb from the butcher.

“And I’m Special Agent Benson.” He stepped protectively between Natalie and me, having also picked up our visitor’s unusual scrutiny.

My dad gestured for everyone to be seated. “It must be something important to bring you all this way,” he said.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Perhaps you’d like to have this discussion in private?”

He waved away her concern. “These two will know everything we discuss before you’ve even checked into your hotel. We might as well save everyone time and trouble.”

“I see,” she said. “Your daughter’s file landed on my boss’s desk and I must say, it’s quite impressive.” She turned to me, resting her folded arms on the table. “I was also interested to learn you’ve been part of the political life at all the embassies your father has been posted to.”

I’d been a baby when my mother was killed fighting for her purse in a Beirut alley. When I got to the age when most other diplomat’s kids were shipped off to boarding school, Dad made token noises about sending me, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d fought in combat, stared down rebels, and done a ton of other scary things I’d never know about, but he said losing me was more than he could handle.

“She’s been a great asset, which is one of the many reasons I’ve kept her with me,” my dad said, feeling out the situation. “She’s fluent in Arabic and is often included in conversations among the wives at embassy parties. They tend to reveal things their husbands never would.”

“Don’t forget to mention she’s a crack shot, and she took down Martinez last week in hand-to-hand,” Benson cheerfully volunteered, only to be met with my dad’s withering stare. “Well, she did,” he added, not letting Dad have the last word.

“I see,” Natalie murmured with quiet amusement.

I risked a peek at my dad. This woman was way too friendly for someone planning to transfer us to Timbuktu, but something was definitely going down here.

“Riley,” she said, “do you know who Stephen Frasier is?”

Probably the better question was: who didn’t?

My dad answered for me. “What does a tech billionaire have to do with my daughter?”

“Stephen Frasier is developing software with the potential to revolutionize intelligence gathering,” she said. In other words, more efficient ways to spy on each other. “He has agreed to sell it to the U.S. and our allies, and no one else.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you’re telling us this, ma’am,” I said.

“Stephen Frasier has a daughter, Hayden, who’s the same age as you.” She reached for the pretty china teapot Mrs. Parks always set out for guests. “She’s a student at The Harrington Academy.”

Whoa, even I’d heard of that school. It was a swaggy place somewhere in Connecticut catering to children of the rich and fabulous. We’d spent Christmas in Washington a few years back where I’d met some senator’s kid at a holiday party. He thought he was all that and bragged about going to Harrington.

A shadow of concern passed over Natalie’s features as she sipped her tea. “The girl’s safety has been called into question. They’ve recently implemented new security protocols at Harrington, but if the young lady had someone on the inside, who could perhaps accompany her where traditional bodyguards could not, it would add an extra layer of security.”

“Let me guess,” Dad said in a tight voice. “Our government must guarantee his family’s safety from less-ethical competitors, or the deal’s off.”

She leaned back in her chair and shrugged; she was just the messenger, after all. “In a nutshell, yes.”

The subtle shift in my dad’s pose signaled it was time to get down to business. “I assume you’re telling us this because your superiors are interested in Riley?”

Natalie set down her cup, recognizing her opening. “Your report regarding her encounter with the three militants in the marketplace was factual and correct?”

He gave her a sharp nod.

“Then yes, we would like to offer her a place at Harrington.”