THE MORNING AFTER Boston, I needed three vanilla Americanos just to keep my eyes open. After we’d packed up my equipment, Calahan and I had made the long drive from Boston back to New York, but heavy rain and howling winds had slowed the traffic and what should have taken five hours took closer to seven. I’d only arrived home an hour before I had to get out of bed again and I’d spent that hour lying awake, going over and over what had happened in Konstantin’s hotel room. I was still shaky from how close I’d come to getting killed. But there was that look I’d seen in his eyes, right at the end, when I’d told him I was no one…. At that moment, he’d stopped being terrifying. He’d seemed almost...protective.

And the way he’d looked at me, when we both realized his leg was between mine....

Under the covers, my hand had crept slowly down, over my stomach, and into my panties. It had started off slow and gentle, just a way to calm me down so I could sleep. But it gradually got faster and more urgent, little details driving my fingers faster and faster. The feel of his pecs against me, the way his muscled leg had spread my thighs, the hot hardness of his cock through his pants…

My heels dug into the mattress, my knees came up, and suddenly I was rocking and gasping, my thighs crushing my hand between them. And then, panting in the aftermath, what the hell is wrong with me? This is Konstantin Gulyev!

Now, slumped at my desk, I was struggling to stay awake. Calahan had been silently brooding all morning. I knew he was worried about Alison. We both were. She was at the hospital right now, and any minute the operation to transform her into Christina would be starting. Thanks to us failing in Boston, in a few weeks she’d be sent right into the lion’s den.

I busied myself pulling together everything we had on Christina. Compared to Konstantin, we knew very little about her. She’d suddenly appeared in his life about four months ago, sexy and glamorous and always dressed in amazing designer clothes. I stopped for a second, staring at a photo of her and Konstantin as they prepared to board a private jet. That bit of my brain that noticed details was scratching at my mind, trying to tell me something was off, but I was too tired to figure out what I was seeing. I kept going and only stopped again when I came to a close up shot of Christina. She was gorgeous, but there was something about her I just didn’t like, a cruelty in those clear blue eyes….

Wait, am I jealous? Is that why I don’t like her? I felt myself flush and got on with my work. Alison was going to have to mimic every detail of this woman: the way she walked, the way she spoke. I started going through the most recent photos of Christina, taken by an Interpol team while she was in Milan. One, taken shortly before the crash, showed her climbing into the sports car, the wind lifting the back of her loose blouse to reveal—

I jumped to my feet, my eyes wide.

“What?” asked Calahan, immediately alert.

I grabbed my phone. “We have to call Carrie,” I said as I dialed. “We have to stop the operation!”

He grabbed his phone and called the hospital, but the receptionist refused to pull Doctor Franklin out of an operation to come to the phone. And Carrie’s phone went straight to voicemail. I knew she was at the hospital, keeping watch over Alison. The hospital must have made her turn it off.

I looked at the door. The hospital was less than a block away. “Keep trying,” I told Calahan. And ran. I pelted down the stairs to the street and then along the sidewalk, dodging tourists and street food carts. By the time the huge, gray bulk of the hospital loomed up ahead of me, I was red-faced and panting, and wishing I’d joined Kate on all those runs through Central Park she used to do.

I asked a startled nurse which operating theater Doctor Franklin was in and then crashed through the doors. Everyone around the operating table looked up in shock. Masked and gowned, Doctor Franklin looked very different, but I’d have known those big, bushy white eyebrows anywhere. And yes, that was Alison on the table, her face a mess of marker pen lines.

“What the hell are you doing?” snapped Doctor Franklin. “Get out of here! You’re not sterile!”

I leaned against the door. “Stop,” I panted. “Stop the operation!”

“What? Why?” Doctor Franklin looked towards a window for help and I saw Carrie standing on the other side, equally confused.

“Christina has a tattoo,” I managed, still out of breath. “Low down on her back. We didn’t know it was there.”

Doctor Franklin sighed. “You came in here for that?! That’s not a problem, we’ll give Alison the same tattoo when we’re done with the operation.”

I shook my head. “But she already has a tattoo in the same place!”

Everyone froze.

“You’re sure?” asked Doctor Franklin, after a few seconds.

I nodded. “About a year ago, some of us went to a karaoke bar and Alison danced on the table. Her top rode up and I saw.”

Doctor Franklin cursed. “Help me roll her on her side,” he told the nurses. They did, and when he lifted Alison’s robe, we saw the tribal band she had across her lower back.

“What does Christina have there?” Carrie called through the window.

“A bird,” I said forlornly.

“Could Alison’s tattoo be removed by laser?” asked Carrie desperately. “And then the new one tattooed on?”

Doctor Franklin shook his head. “A tattoo that big would take a whole course of treatments to remove. There’s not enough time.”

A bang made everyone in the operating theater jump. It was Carrie, slamming her fist against the glass in frustration.

The whole undercover operation was off.

Back at my desk, I stared at my monitor without seeing it. Our once-in-a-lifetime chance was gone. Our only shot at taking Konstantin down.

We could go back to watching him, but I knew we were never going to get lucky. Konstantin was too damn smart. Carrie’s plan had been our one chance to turn the tide. Now the FBI was going to lose, all because there were no female agents who could do the job. It had to be someone from our team: we were the only ones who knew Konstantin well enough to stand a chance of passing as Christina. Alison had a tattoo in the wrong place and Kate, even if we brought her back from Alaska, was way too short. And those two were the only women on the—

I suddenly caught sight of my reflection in my monitor and my heart seemed to stop.

No. No, that’s insane.

But I was the same height as Christina. And the same build. And I didn’t have any tattoos.

I can’t be her. Christina was glamorous and cool. She was the center of attention everywhere she went. The complete opposite of me. I could never pull it off.

But…. I looked around. Not just our little team, but the whole of the floor looked despondent. Konstantin was going to cover this city like a black cloud, blocking out the sun. Another month, maybe, and he’d grow so powerful that the other crime bosses would be forced to fight him. New York would see the sort of violence it hadn’t experienced since the 1930s. Hundreds of innocents would die. And when Konstantin eventually won—and I was certain he would—we’d be looking at a city run by a criminal. He’d have too much power for anyone to stop, even the FBI.

I thought of Rufus, my mentor, about to go outside. Someone has to do something.

But... me? I’d have to lie, constantly, every day. I’m a terrible liar. And even if I was the best liar in the world, how could I keep up the act with Konstantin when—

My skin went hot. When I felt like this about him?

And if I lost focus for one second, if I did something Christina wouldn’t do, or didn’t do something she would do, and he found out I was spying on him, he’d kill me. There’d be no mercy this time.

I imagined being in the mansion with him, cut off from my friends and with no backup, maybe for weeks or months. The fear hit me fully, then, like someone was pumping ice water steadily up through my veins. This is Konstantin Gulyev we’re talking about.

A little voice inside me whispered, no one has to know you thought of this. Carrie hadn’t even considered me for the mission. All I had to do was keep quiet and the mission would stay cancelled.

But...I’d know. When people started dying, when Konstantin took over... I’d know.

I forced my shaking legs to stand and walked to the elevator.

Carrie’s office is right up on the top floor, which gave me far too much time to think. I nearly stopped the elevator three times and walking down the long hallway to her door was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This is crazy. I’m not brave enough to do this.

By the time I reached Carrie’s door, I didn’t dare stop to knock: if I stopped, I’d just turn around and run. So I barged in and then stood there, eyes wide and chest tight.

Carrie was sitting behind her desk, in the process of unwrapping a sandwich. An antique clock was just chiming one. She looked up, startled. “Hailey?”

I couldn’t speak.

She stood, trying to fill the awkward silence. “I always shut myself in here at this time and turn my phone off. It’s the only way I get to eat.” She walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows of thick, bulletproof glass that formed one end of the room and looked out at the fantastic view of New York. “For five minutes, I just stand here. Reminds me what we’re fighting for.”

Today, though, she didn’t look inspired. She looked defeated. She loved this city and its people and most of them never even knew her name, or the lengths she’d gone to to protect them.

If New York has a guardian spirit, it’s Carrie.

And now she’d lost. She let out a long sigh and dropped her eyes to the floor—

“I can do it,” I blurted.

Carrie turned to me and looked blank, which made me falter. That’s how completely unsuitable I was: she didn’t even understand what I meant.

“I can be Christina,” I told her.

She cocked her head to one side... and then her jaw dropped. “You—” She looked me up and down and I could see the battle on her face. She wanted it to be possible but she also didn’t want it to be possible. She’s really grown to care about me. “No. No, I mean…. No, you’re not tall enough.”

“I am. I’m exactly the same height as Alison and Christina. They just wear heels and I... slouch.” I stood up straight.

Carrie looked ill. She called in Doctor Franklin, maybe hoping he’d rule out the idea. But he cupped my head in his hands, felt my jawline, compared a photo of me to a photo of Christina..., and nodded. “It would work,” he told us. “Any tattoos we should know about?” I shook my head. “Any scars?”

I froze. Calahan is the only one who knows about my childhood. We were working on a case involving children and one night I just broke down and told him everything. He got this fiercely protective look in his eyes and I think he would have gone straight out and hunted down my stepfather if he was still alive.

But if I was going to do this, they had to know. I lifted my suit jacket and my blouse to reveal the ugly burn scar on my side.

Doctor Franklin stooped and took a look at it. “Not a problem,” he said cheerily, and scribbled something on a clipboard. “We’ll say some hot metal burned you while they were freeing you from the wreckage.”

Carrie’s reaction was completely different. She must have read the pain in my expression because for a second, she looked as if she was going to wrap me up in a hug. She settled for taking my hand and squeezing it tight. She held my gaze for a moment longer and then sighed and shook her head, still undecided. “You have no undercover experience,” she said. “You’re not even a field agent.”

“But I do know Konstantin,” I said quietly.

“Hailey... you’d be his girlfriend. You’d have to—”

I flushed. “I know.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

For a second, I flashed back to Konstantin asking me the same question. I shook my head. Men don’t notice me... except him.

Carrie closed her eyes. “I—No. No, this is beyond crazy. No.”

“It’s the only chance we have,” I said.

She stared at me for a moment, then whirled around and stalked over to the window, wrapping her arms around herself as if the view suddenly made her cold. “I can’t ask you to do this,” she said at last.

“You don’t have to.” I said. “I’m volunteering.”

She turned and pinned me with a look. “Hailey, there’s not a shred of compassion or warmth in that man. If he suspects, even for a second, that you’re not Christina, he will kill you.”

I took a deep breath... and nodded.

Carrie pressed her lips tight together, deciding. Then she nodded. “Alright, then. We’ll get the operation organized. You get down to the detention area. She just arrived. You better start getting familiar with her.”

It was time to meet Christina.