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Arvanitis, her direct boss at CPD.
    At five-foot-eight, he stood barely taller than Vanessa, and he seemed to live in his silver-rimmed glasses and kept what was left of his receding hair cut in a military buzz. At first glance unprepossessing—at second glance, formidable. He pumped weights, belonged to Mensa, and his dark brown eyes could make you feel you’d been cornered by a tiger. He brushed past her with a black look, the fallout beginning.
    She frowned, on her guard. “Where’s the DDO?”
    â€œYou’re lucky I got here first.” Chris pivoted so abruptly he pinned her in the corner with her back against the wall and they were eye-to-eye, his thick lashes magnified behind the lenses of his glasses. “What the hell, Vanessa?”
    â€œChris—”
    â€œWhy the hell did you ignore my order to abort?”
    â€œWhy the hell did you call me off?”
    Chris shook his head sharply. “Don’t you dare provoke me, not after all I’ve done for you, not after Prague. I covered your ass. Without me you’d be in fucking backwater Montevideo.”
    His face loomed so close she flinched. “You’re right.” She swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry. “Sorry.”
    â€œGoddamn it, Vanessa.” His dark brows pulled together sharply, and his eyes still bored through her, but he lowered his voice and took a step back. “We had intel from MI6 that one of the Iranians at the conference might be a target.”
    â€œWhen did this come in? I wasn’t read in—”
    â€œI don’t have to read you in.
If I give you a direct order, you follow it.
What the hell about that don’t you understand?” He turned and strode into the living room, and she followed.
    â€œYou’re absolutely right, Chris . . .” Her voice softened, the corners of her mouth pulling down.
God, she hated this feeling—like a contrite child.
He still had his back to her, but she did her best to reach for words he needed to hear her say. “Of course I need to obey orders.”
    Now she reached out physically, touching his sleeve just as he turned to face her. “But I got the intel, and, Chris, it’s what we need to put nails into Operation Ghost Hunt, so we can get Bhoot, so at least hear me out.”
    â€œYou’re missing the point—”
    â€œNo, I get that I screwed up, I get that—but if I had obeyed your order, if I aborted the op, my asset would still be dead, and I wouldn’t have shit—and this is big. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
    His eyes narrowed to slits.
“You?”
    â€œIt’s what
we’ve
been waiting for,” she corrected herself quickly. “Our team at CPD.”
    He stared at her now, intently, and she felt him take in her bruised cheek, the shadows beneath her eyes, her bare feet. His expression shifted among anger, exasperation, and open concern.
    As she met his gaze, he turned away, rubbing the knuckles of one hand hard against his cheek, a familiar gesture of fatigue. He checked his watch. “The DDO should be here any minute.”
    â€œOkay, good. I made coffee. High-test,” she said, deliberately pointing Chris in the direction of the small, sterile kitchen. When he followed her cue, she took her first deep breath since his arrival. Sleep-deprived and running on fumes, Vanessa could safely assume Chris was in a similar state—straight from an eighteen-plus-hour day at Headquarters, where he’d been dealing with the fallout from Austria.
Her
fallout.
    Seconds later she opened the door to the Agency’s Deputy Director of Operations, Phillip Hawkins. The DDO breezed past Vanessa with eyebrows raised. “Clearly what happened in Prague hasn’t kept you out of trouble or improved your judgment.”
    Damn.
    â€œAt least you made it back in one piece.” But he didn’t make it sound like a plus. As he passed from