The same doorman was on duty tonight. He was shaped like a nineteenth-century torpedo: fat warhead, thick tank, feet splayed like fins. The first time, he’d grunted his dismissal of her at the same time that he waved a pair of swishy-haired blondes through the club’s brass double doors. She, of course, had challenged him. “What do you mean, you’re full? You’re letting them in.”

He’d taken in her cropped dark hair, best white blouse, and jeans with his squinty little eyes. “Just what I said.”

That had been last Saturday night. Piper couldn’t do her job unless she was inside Spiral, but since the club was open only four nights a week, she hadn’t been able to make her next attempt until yesterday. Even though she’d combed her hair and put on a skirt and blouse, he hadn’t been impressed, and that meant upping her game. She’d picked up this dress at H&M, traded in her comfortable boots for a torturous pair of strappy stilettos, and borrowed an evening clutch from her friend Jen. The clutch wasn’t big enough to hold more than her cell, fake ID, and a couple of twenty-dollar bills. The rest—everything that correctly identified her as Piper Dove—was stashed in the trunk of her car: laptop computer; a duffel containing the hats, sunglasses, jackets, and scarves she used as disguises; and a semiobscene-looking device called a Tinkle Belle.

Spiral, named after Cooper Graham’s long and deadly accurate spiral passes, was Chicago’s hottest club, and a line had predictably formed at the velvet rope. As she approached Torpedo Head, she held her breath and drew her shoulders back to push up her breasts. “You’re busy tonight, gov,” she sort of cooed in the fake British accent she’d been practicing.

Torpedo Head noticed her breasts, then her face, then dropped his chin to take in her legs. The man was a pig. Good. She cocked her head and gave him a smile that revealed the straight white teeth her father had spent thousands of dollars on when she’d been twelve, even though she’d begged him to use the money to buy her a horse. Now that she was thirty-three, the horse still struck her as the better deal.

“I cawn’t get over how big American men are.” With the tip of her index finger, she pushed up the bridge of the retro-trendy eyeglasses she’d added at the last minute to further disguise her appearance.

He leered. “I work out.”

“Obb-viously.” She wished she could choke the son of a bitch with his Spiral lanyard.

He waved her through into the club’s luxurious black-and-bronze interior.