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Back Deceptive Innocence Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. part one
  3. prologue
  4. chapter one
  5. Four years later
  6. chapter two
  7. chapter three
  8. chapter four
  9. chapter five
  10. chapter six
  11. chapter seven
  12. chapter eight
  13. chapter nine
  14. chapter ten
  15. chapter eleven
  16. chapter twelve
  17. chapter thirteen
  18. chapter fourteen
  19. part two
  20. chapter fifteen
  21. chapter sixteen
  22. chapter seventeen
  23. chapter eighteen
  24. chapter nineteen
  25. chapter twenty
  26. chapter twenty-one
  27. chapter twenty-two
  28. chapter twenty-three
  29. part three
  30. chapter twenty-four
  31. chapter twenty-five
  32. chapter twenty-six
  33. chapter twenty-seven
  34. chapter twenty-eight
  35. chapter twenty-nine
  36. chapter thirty
  37. chapter thirty-one
  38. chapter thirty-two
  39. chapter thirty-three
  40. chapter thirty-four
  41. chapter thirty-five
  42. chapter thirty-six
  43. chapter thirty-seven
  44. chapter thirty-eight
  45. acknowledgments
  46. About Kyra Davis
  47. Copyright
  48. contents

Until I look at the costume again. I look at my position . . . I look at my hair, swept up in a low bun, loose enough to reveal my waves. Again it just looks so familiar, and I know it has something to do with history. The problem with having studied so many of Lander’s interests over the last few years is that all that new information is crammed into my head and getting mixed up. If I remember the name of a battle, I forget the date or vice versa. And to be honest, the battles themselves are of less interest to me than the people who waged them. During my studies I found that the women of World War I and World War II were much more interesting than the men. The sly strategies they employed in order to survive while still advancing their cause . . . well, it’s just something I can relate to. Like Virginia Hall, a civilian woman who trained battalions of the French Resistance and gathered intelligence on their enemies. She successfully became a master of disguise in order to fool the Germans, even going so far as to train herself not to walk with a limp despite her prosthetic leg. And conversely, in World War I there was Mata Hari . . .

Oh.

I look down at the drawing again. The picture it’s modeled after is so famous I’m embarrassed I hadn’t figured it out before. And yet I can’t help but double-check. I pull out my phone and do a Google search, hoping that by some miracle I’m wrong. That I’m misremembering.

But I’m not misremembering anything, because there she is: Mata Hari, wearing the exact costume I’m wearing in the drawing.

Mata Hari the seductress.

Mata Hari the whore.

Mata Hari . . . the Frenchwoman who worked as a double agent for the Germans in World War I.

Mata Hari the traitor.

My hand is shaking now as I move the letters around. I KNOW HER . . .

. . . and there it is. The solution to the anagram.

The memory of Lander’s warm touch against my skin now turns very, very cold. His prints chill me as I recoil from the drawing. I want to throw up. I want to run from the room. But instead I just read the unscrambled note again and again. Four little words:

I KNOW HER IDENTITY.

part two

chapter fifteen

I’m sitting on the floor of Lander’s office. My hair hangs heavily over my shoulders as I hold his drawing of me in one hand and the solution to his anagram in the other. He had titled the drawing Kind, Witty Heroine. But the anagram for K.I.N.D. W.I.T.T.Y. H.E.R.O.I.N.E. relayed something entirely different:

I KNOW HER IDENTITY.

Twenty minutes ago he had kissed my cheek, breathed in my scent.

I know her identity.