“The…man who was arrested. He knows about me, about this apartment, and about Aviva. I would like to think that he would never betray us, but I…” Her face crumpled before she seemed to catch herself. With a visible effort she reasserted her outward calm. “I do not know how long he might hold out under their torture,” she whispered. “I might have days or weeks or—” Her voice broke, and she stopped.

“Or maybe the man that they arrested today might only be imprisoned. Or he might already be—” Sophie stopped, unwilling to say it.

“Dead,” the woman finished bleakly.

“Or he might be dead,” Sophie agreed, trying to gentle words that weren’t gentle at all. “You might be safe.”

La Chanteuse looked at her, despair shadowing her features. “Or I might not. We might not.”

“I just—”

“Enough.” The woman cut her off, speculation about the fate of the man on the basilica steps at an abrupt end. “What do you want?”

The harsh, cynical question caught Sophie off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

“You did what you did at that basilica this afternoon for a reason. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out what that reason is. But no one does anything without an agenda. Did you think that what you did would cast me in your debt?”

“What? No.” Sophie turned, scowling.

“I don’t believe you.”

“If we are measuring debt, then whatever assistance I may have provided this afternoon has been subsequently repaid in kind. Had I taken the American back to my hotel, we would likely have been found, arrested, and I’d be having a far different conversation than the one I’m having now. If we’re keeping score, we owe each other nothing, and in the morning, I will leave, and you will never see me again. I don’t even know your name, which will make it easy for me to forget I was ever here.”

La Chanteuse seemed to weigh Sophie’s answer and came up wanting. “Why did you do it, then?”

Sophie didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Because I could.” It was an honest, if incomplete, answer.

“I don’t know what you’ve been sent here to do but the fact that London sent two agents tells me that it is important or urgent or both. What you did was foolish and reckless and put you and your mission, whatever it is, at an extraordinary risk.”

Sophie couldn’t disagree.