“Ready when you are, Echo.”

I glance up to see Alpha watching me in the rearview mirror of the limousine. His dark eyes are emotionless, his ash brown hair concealed by a chauffeur’s cap for the mission at Jamison Hart’s estate. My partner’s real name is August, just like mine is Eliza, but we only use the code names assigned to us by the Executive, even when we’re alone. This is the only context in which we’ve ever known each other, after all. The orphaned girl with poisoned lips and the scarred boy with X-ray vision, brought together by a secret government agency dedicated to taking out the nation’s most dangerous enemies.

You are aberrants, Agent Novenine said to us when we were children. Do you know what that means? You were born with a genetic anomaly. You aren’t normal. You can never be normal.

It’s taken me almost my entire life to understand just how true that is.

“Can you give me a minute?” I ask, feeling around inside my purse for a compact mirror. “I want to make sure I didn’t forget anything.”

That’s totally a lie, even if he won’t call me on it. The truth is I’m feeling on edge tonight, almost nervous. What I really want is reassurance, but I can’t even get a smile from August, the one person I’ve ever been able to rely on. I trust my partner more than anything, but he’s not the type to offer emotional support. I used to hate him for it, back when we were teenagers. I’d scream at him as he waited, impassive and unflinching, for me to finish breaking down.

How can you just stand there?

How could you be such a heartless bastard?

What kind of monster doesn’t even cry after killing someone?

Now I know it’s the only reason the Executive paired us together at all. I still don’t know what happened to August when he was a small boy, before we both ended up at the Executive, but I eventually grew up enough to understand that the deep scars on his back meant something bad, really bad, that they weren’t just surface wounds. He was scarred on the inside as well, which meant he wasn’t ever going to be capable of crying, or smiling, or touching someone else without flinching. And so it wouldn’t matter if Echo wore her heart on her sleeve, because Alpha would always remain silent and steady, an anchor for her emotions. He’d be the perfect counterbalance for her weakness.

Over the years, I’ve become more focused and less prone to outbursts. Stopped crying before and after every mission. Learned to hide what I feel for as long as I can, as long as it takes, until I’m finally alone and no one can hear me scream.

In other words, I’ve become a better killer.

I check my appearance in the compact mirror, which also serves as a video communication device if I press my index finger in just the right place. My green eyes have remained their natural color for the mission, though my short blond hair has been highlighted with pink streaks, and my strapless black dress is accompanied by a pair of sneakers.

Normally I would have forced myself into a pair of ridiculously high heels so I could lose my balance and fall, literally, into Jamison Hart’s arms. But the billionaire tends to go for women who don’t follow the rules, and I need to catch his attention as soon as possible. I can’t afford to make any mistakes. In a typical mission, Alpha sets up his sniper rifle on a nearby rooftop so he can watch over me with his X-ray vision. Take out any threats if I’m compromised. But the mansion known as the Woodland Castle is well-guarded and isolated in a forest clearing, and there aren’t any vantage points at all.

If anyone realizes I don’t belong at Jamison Hart’s twenty-eighth birthday party, I’ll have to get out on my own.

Alpha clears his throat, glancing at the digital clock next to the steering wheel. I can’t stall for much longer. Even if I’d rather be anywhere but here, I have to get out of the limousine at some point. The Executive has made it extremely clear what the consequences are for failing to close a mission. The last time I didn’t kill a target, I was sentenced to solitary confinement for a month. There’s nothing like being locked in a cell plastered with pictures of your target’s innocent victims, forced to listen to a recording of the explosion that claimed their lives, one night and day for every soul lost.

And all because you couldn’t manage one little kiss.

The penalty for failing to kill Jamison Hart will be one year of solitary confinement. Not because of my prior offenses, but because that’s how many people will die if I don’t succeed. So it’s completely vital that I stick to the script and cover story without losing my nerve before the mission even begins. But just this once, I wish I could ask August to soothe my fears. It’ll be okay, Eliza, he might say. I believe in you, Eliza.

But every second of that is a fantasy. By now I’ve learned to shove my desire for comfort and reassurance somewhere deep down inside, the same way I bury the names and faces of the targets I’ve killed. Because I already know what I’ll get if I ask for anything. No choice, Echo, Alpha will say. Remember the victims, Echo.

As if he’s ever kissed anyone and had to watch them convulse to death because of it. As if he’s ever been told that the only thing he’ll ever be good for is killing with his lips. A kiss will only ever be just a kiss for him, and pretty much everyone else in the world.

But never for me.

 

The Executive sent me on my first mission when I was thirteen and August was seventeen. Our target was Javier Angelo, the teenage son of a foreign diplomat. At a wedding reception, Javier and I sat beside a moonlit pool while the other guests celebrated and danced elsewhere. We flirted and held hands and talked about what Javier believed was a mutual love of French rap music. I didn’t know why he had to die. I wasn’t allowed to ask. But I knew enough to understand that innocent civilians would lose their lives if I didn’t close the mission. This was what I’d been training for my entire life, after all.

So when there was a pause in the conversation, one in which Javier didn’t look away, I leaned over and pressed my lips against his. It felt so intoxicating when he kissed back that I just kept on going, not pulling away like I’d been instructed to do. His hand swept aside my dyed green hair as my arms encircled his neck, and I really thought there had been some kind of mistake. My lips couldn’t actually be poisoned, could they? Not when we were doing this. Not when it felt so freaking good.

But after approximately fifteen minutes of making out, Javier jerked away from me. He started to choke and convulse as his face slowly turned purple, and his expression was absolutely terrified. Even as I reached out for him, he fell into the pool, making a splash loud enough to be heard by his security detail. An autopsy wouldn’t reveal the poison that was killing him, but I panicked. I’d never seen anyone die before. I turned to run, only to find myself surrounded by men with their guns drawn.

That was when a series of pops sounded. One by one, the members of Javier’s security detail fell to the ground, their blood spilling across the concrete and into the pool. Alpha was shooting them with his sniper rifle. He didn’t have to take them out for me, and he wasn’t supposed to do it at all, but he still did it anyway.

It was my first kiss.

It was his first kill.

 

“I’m ready,” I say, tucking the compact mirror back into my purse, where it nestles against a cell phone that corroborates my fake identity. “See you later, Alpha-gator.”

The silly nickname is the only thing that’s ever made August smile. Once, twenty years ago, when we first met as children. Ever since then, he’s only looked at me with guarded eyes, as if the slightest hint of emotion might send one of us into a tailspin. But I still keep trying to make him smile when we’re alone, even if I’ve stopped expecting anything to come of it. I would say I’ve made it my mission, but I’ve already had enough of those to last a lifetime.

Now, outside the Woodland Castle, August merely nods before getting out of the limousine and walking around to my door. I draw my fingers back from the handle just in time. I’m not supposed to open it on my own. Alpha is my chauffeur for tonight, Mr. Alexander Jones, a temporary hire and nothing more. Treating each other as anything else risks alerting the bodyguards to the fact that we might be something other than what we seem.

But as I step out onto the cobblestone path and into the shadow of the castle-like mansion, August’s gloved hand reaches out and catches my bare arm for the briefest moment. A warm breeze rushes over me, and I find myself inhaling the familiar scent of his cologne.

“Be careful,” he says, his voice low.

I almost can’t react for a moment. It’s an offer of comfort from the last person I expected, not only startling but also illicit now that the mission has begun. I should be worried that my partner has chosen this moment to say something he’s never said before. The mission must be way more dangerous than I thought.

But years and years of training and missions have drilled the Executive’s words into me: You are not the killer. The operative is the killer. You become the operative whenever it is necessary to keep our nation safe. I’m already disappearing into the mission, shoving everything else from my mind, clinging only to my cover story and target objective and forever poisoned lips.

Eliza needs comfort, but Echo does not.

“Thank you, Jones,” I say, turning to face the bodyguards standing outside the Woodland Castle: my destination, his departure. “That will be all.”