Crap, but she hated when he went all bossy-britches on her. She’d worked under his command for a decade, back when her role in the family business had been her reason for breathing, and old habits died hard. Stalking through her unlit living room to the front windows, she peeked through a slat in the teakwood blinds at the night outside, dark and cold. No sign of life on the street below…or in the window across the way. “If you guys are so concerned about me, why isn’t one of you here yet?”

“Tobias is on his way to you.”

“What?” Her other older brother—the fussy lawyer—was probably the last family member she’d expect to show up on her doorstep in Chicago. “Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve got trouble.”

“Then why…why didn’t you call my cell?” Her cell was secure, but anything they said on the landline could be overheard, and likely was, given her storied past. It was why Casey had demanded she get a landline in the first place, so anyone listening would witness Beth being a normal—capital “N” normal—civilian when she spoke to the cable company or one of her coworkers at the Institute.

“Because I want them to know we know.” Casey’s voice was brutal and as cold as the weather outside her apartment. “A hit’s been put on you.”

She froze, her stomach cramping. “You really are in Belfast, aren’t you?” she whispered as everything clicked into place. Tobias flying to see her. Human footprints on Bob and Keith’s balcony. The dark window across the street.

Wait. Not so dark, not anymore. Flashes of light, the kind that signaled discharge by a firearm, lit up the bay window that hadn’t shown any sign of life in nearly forty-eight hours. His window. “Shit.”

The Beretta was back in her hand before she took her next breath, dropping the cordless phone to the rug on her brother’s concerned shouts. Not bothering to find shoes, she dashed down the stairs and out into the street—an empty street that held new menace, every shifting shadow a possible threat—in nothing but her socks. The freezing winter air cut through her thin blouse, sharpening her senses as she sprinted up the shoveled sidewalk.

She had to save her friendly neighborhood spy.

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