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sent a ripple of heat through me. Then he released me and my dress fell back into place.
    Operating on autopilot, I grabbed my violin case and opened the door. I’d taken two steps out into the hallway before I remembered the bodyguard on the stairs. He turned at the sound of the door opening and his jaw dropped. He reached under his jacket—maybe for a radio, maybe for a gun.
    But then I heard Luka emerge behind me, and whatever nod or gesture he made to his bodyguard made the man step back immediately and clear a path for me. I didn’t turn around. I just hurried down the stairs, violin banging against my hip, threw the front door wide and headed straight for the cherry-red SUV. Adam was already inside and waiting and I could see the concern in his eyes. But he faked a fatherly smile and opened the door for me. I quickly climbed inside.
    We roared away and the last image I had of the house, in the rear view mirror, was Luka in the doorway, thoughtfully watching me go.
     
    ***
     
    There was a debriefing, back at Langley. Roberta did a lot of yelling about my “crazy stunt,” although I knew most of it was out of concern. Adam backed me up. “The bug’s in place,” he said. “We pulled it off.” He smiled at me.
    We. I liked that. I felt as if I was part of his team. In with the cool kids, even if it was only temporary. You have no idea how good that feels, when you were never cool at school.
    We didn’t talk about what happened in the bedroom, as such. I wasn’t sure how much they were able to put together, from the few words we’d said plus some rustling and panting. Thank God there were no cameras in the bedroom. Both Roberta and Adam asked if I was okay and I said yes, which was both true and not true at all.
    I was still trying to process the whole thing. One minute, I remembered it as being terrifying, the next it was the hottest sexual experience of my life, actual sex included. I thought about it from one angle and I’d been an innocent, out of my depth, desperately trying to come up with an excuse for being in his room. I thought about it another way and I was desperate in a whole different way. I’m not scared of you, I’d claimed. But I was scared of him. I was just so turned on by him that it was overcoming my fear.
    I’d complained that I was stuck in a rut- that nothing changed in the sterile, airless world I inhabited. Then, suddenly, I’d been way out in a void, dangling by a hair-thin rope over a precipice. The way I’d reacted to him was deeply disturbing, completely alien to me and yet in some weird way familiar. As if he was a dangerous drug I’d tried for the first time and found to be perfect for me. Perfect, and addictive.
    The one reassuring thing was that it was over. My first op had been a success...just. And I might have pissed off Roberta, but I’d impressed Adam. Maybe he’d give me another shot.
    And, whether he did or not, my future lay a long way from Luka Malakov. Aside from listening to his phone calls, I’d never hear of him again.

 
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
    The next morning, I wasn’t granted a late start just because the debriefing had finished in the early hours. I dragged myself in, eyelids only held open by coffee, and tried to avoid Roberta. I figured she’d be mad that I’d ignored her order and ran upstairs, and also that I’d gone against her wishes and volunteered for the op in the first place.
    I started transcribing calls. Some banker, complaining to his friend about his wife. Then Luka, talking about another one of his women. That got my interest, but I was still half asleep as my fingers rattled over the keys, only vaguely aware of what I was typing.
    Then, suddenly, I sat bolt upright in my chair.
    The woman Luka was talking about was me.
    “She was the one in the string quartet,” Luka was saying.
    Another voice. “The short one?”
    “No. The pretty one.”
    The pretty one?!
    “You think she was up to something?” asked the other