Mike thought about having seen her that night in the back room of the pop-up store, as she wrapped his package for him—the pretend gift for his sister, who would never even see it. His sister would have laughed at him if he gave it to her. He had no idea why, but he had felt compelled to meet Theo. She was such an obvious target for dangerous criminals now, her circumstances were well known, too much so, and there was a fragility to her that brought out all of Mike’s protective instincts.

She herself came from a moneyed, respectable, upper class New York family. They were comfortable but didn’t have a vast fortune. She was an only child, an outstanding student, and she had caught the wave of internet commerce in the early 2000s after she graduated from Harvard magna cum laude. She was a smart businesswoman, and had built an impressive success of her own, though not on the same scale as Matthieu, but she was much younger, and had embraced what she knew best. She wasn’t driven by the same demons he was, with an entire family history of treason and betrayal to live down. Her family had been peaceful and her relationship with them had been good. But she had her own burdens to bear now, and her own losses.

It was all so different from Mike’s own history. He was from a boisterous poor family in Boston. He had two older brothers and the sister who was now an artist. His father had been a police sergeant and died young of alcoholism. His mother had managed her four kids on her own, with two jobs and doing whatever extra work she could get. She had worked hard and set that example for them, and she insisted that they get good educations. The best way for her sons to achieve that was to join the military, which she encouraged them to do. He had a football scholarship to Notre Dame, but he lost his two brothers in the Persian Gulf in the Iran–Iraq war, one in an accident and the other in combat. Mike had joined the navy in order to go to graduate school and get a masters in criminology. He wound up in military intelligence, which he loved. He had been decorated for several very dangerous missions in the Middle East. He didn’t mind the risks since he had no attachments, no wife or kids, and his mother had died by then. The CIA had been the right job for him for nearly twenty years. It challenged him, and he liked knowing that he was making a difference, even if in unsung ways. The idea of protecting people from the unseen evils in the world motivated him. He had strong protective instincts.