Ellie’s attention was locked on the last line in the text: “Have a wonderful day!” An undercover LAPD officer worked at Clean & Dry. The word wonderful was code for her to drop whatever she was doing and meet her handler now. Something critical had happened—something that required a face-to-face.

Ellie went back to unpacking her groceries, taking her time—had to, because there was a strong possibility she was being watched right now. The LAPD believed her apartment, one of several Anton owned through various shell companies, was bugged with hidden mikes and cameras. It made sense. Anton had insisted she live here, and there was also the matter of the smartphone Anton had given her—the same model he gave to all his stickmen. Her phone, an Enigma Black, a model developed by BlackBerry and Enigma, the world’s top encryption company, was the same type used by spy agencies. Hers, the FBI had told her, came preloaded with special government-level covert software that turned it into a roving hot mike, allowing Anton to listen in whenever he wanted and, if he were so inclined, remotely turn on the phone’s camera. Every text and email she sent or received, every single phone call and every website she visited, was captured and recorded.

And because Anton required his people to have their fancy government phones on them at all times, he knew not only where they were at a given moment but also where they traveled throughout the day, the phone providing real-time GPS tracking information. Her new friends on the combined LAPD/FBI task force had discovered all sorts of interesting things about the technology Anton used to keep a close eye on his stickmen.

Live your life as though you’re on the world’s biggest movie set, her handler, Roland Bauer, had told her. Always stay in character, because someone is either watching or listening to you every single second of your day.

After Ellie finished with the groceries, she took her time straightening up a bit; then she grabbed her purse and a light white cashmere sweater and headed out. The weather was pleasantly cool but not cold. Christmas decorations were on display in store windows.

As she walked, she thought about Cody, wondered what he was up to right now, whether she was on his mind. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in four months. No contact was allowed during what Roland called her burn-in period, to establish Faye Simpson’s cover, and she realized, again, just how much she missed him.

Her destination wasn’t Clean & Dry but a place three blocks away, a bar called the Alibi. Entering the bar was like walking through a time portal into the late 1990s: wood-paneled walls holding framed covers of vinyl records; autographed photos of dead actors and singers from insanely popular boy bands and the pioneers of a rock music category called “grunge”; and everywhere you looked, sprinkled on the shelves behind the bar and on the walls, these small stuffed animals called Beanie Babies. Everything old was new again, recycled like the movies, as though no one was happy with the present, everyone wanting to retreat into the past, when life had been simpler, maybe.