“No. I’m not doing this.” She wouldn’t give up her dreams just because a field agent with a broken nose asked her the right questions and sent her puzzles in the post. She wouldn’t be the sort of girl she just wasn’t, concerned with finding a husband and holding his attention. She didn’t know how to be that girl.

When I close my eyes, you are there. When I turn my heart to prayer, you are there. The words, penned in French, jumped off the page at her.

She leaned back in her chair, straightening her spine, and stared at the wall. There were a hundred and sixty gaudy orange flowers on this wall, faded to a shade nearly not-glaring. Three hundred and twenty once-green leaves. Twenty-two vertical stripes behind them. Four inches between each row.

When I turn my heart to prayer . . .

She hadn’t been able to pray since she lost Maman. Not really. She hadn’t really tried. Because before, she’d never had to try. God had always been there, waiting, directing. She’d never had to do more than reach out to Him, and there He was. Filling her mind with numbers. With the assurance that He’d set the world in order, and so it wasn’t chaotic. There were equations. There were formulas. There were reasons.

She didn’t know how to reach Him now, when it wasn’t easy anymore. She didn’t know how to find Him when He wasn’t just right there. She didn’t know how to know Him when the numbers were silent.

Her eyes dropped back down to the encoded letter. She didn’t know how to do this either. She didn’t know how to deal with someone who could pinpoint her so easily and yet who envisioned such a different future.

Cold rain hissed at the window. The kitchen sat empty and aroma-less with no supper upon the stove. The newspapers towered on the table, unsolved and uncaring. She should cook something. Or read something. Or try to find a pattern in the ice on the window.

Instead, she took the decoded letter in hand and sprawled on her bed to read it again, brushing away a wave of hair that fell against her cheek in the process. It was nonsense, most of it.

But it was beautiful nonsense nonetheless.

22

The days had been rather mild for November in London, even given the rain. But Drake had nothing but the rain to blame for the absence of the man in the doorway across the street. He hadn’t been there since the day Drake had gone down to get a look at him—two days ago.

It was the rain. He hoped. Because if it wasn’t the rain, then it was most likely that whoever he was had spotted Drake after all.