Sofia didn’t know what to do. The woman was dying and against all her better judgment, all her years of training, she did the one thing she knew might save her.

She gave her mouth to mouth.

She leaned the woman’s head back, pinched her nose, put her mouth over hers, and breathed into her lungs. She did it over and over, counting the time between breaths.

By the time the guard returned, the woman was dead.

Sofia helped him get her on the stretcher and they carried her into the hospital.

Inside, she saw why no one had come to their assistance. It was complete chaos. People were on the chairs in the waiting area, on the ground, in the examination rooms. There were women everywhere in the same pink uniform.

Sofia stopped a nurse in the corridor.

“What’s happening?”

“They just keep coming.”

“From the Empress factory?”

“Yes. They can’t breathe. They’ve been poisoned.”

Another woman burst out of an examination room and the nurse ran to her, catching her as she collapsed.

The nurse looked at Sofia desperately.

“What should I do?” she cried. “They’re dying. They’re all dying.”

12

Laurel found a bar that looked like it had come off the set of a Sergio Leone movie.

Inside was a man talking to the bartender and another at the far end, his head on the counter.

“Is he asleep?” she said to the bartender.

The bartender nodded.

It didn’t look like she’d be seeing much action in there. The thought of sharing the bed with Roth flashed across her mind and she shuddered.

The man was settling his bill and Laurel got on a seat a few down from him.

When she looked at him she nearly fell off the stool.

It was him.

The asset.

“You look like you just saw a ghost,” he said.

Lance Spector.

She couldn’t believe it.

Her mind ran over what she knew of him. Not nearly enough. Delta Force. Training at the farm. Everything had been so redacted.

“They don’t make them like you, where I come from,” she said.

That was always her fallback. Her go to strategy. Flirtation. There was no quicker way to get a man to let his guard down.

“And where’s that?” he said.

“Dale County, Alabama.”

Laurel had been working men her whole life. Where she came from, a girl had no choice. Looks-wise, she was a regular homecoming queen, with blonde hair billowing over her shoulders and blue eyes like two sapphires. Men had been underestimating her for her entire life. Starting with daddy.

He’d been a soldier, an officer, a hero, but also one mean drunk. He’d taught her the first and arguably most important thing she’d ever learned.

Trust no one.