Page 84 of Black Reign

A Beverly Hills event designer closes the loop.

Then I eye the estate.

Private.

Coastal.

High above the Pacific.

The invitation matches.

Every time.

I should feel triumphant.

Instead, I feel something close to guilt.

Ghost trusted me with a door into his real life.

I'm preparing to enter through a wall.

The problem is that I still don't know whether Ghost is real.

Not in the way that matters.

I'm not worried he doesn't exist.

He exists.

Years of conversation prove that.

What I don't know is who owns the intelligence behind the words.

Governments have used honey traps since people discovered secrets were valuable.

I've done work adjacent to enough three-letter agencies to know kindness can be operational.

French services.

American services.

British.

People who are friends until the objective changes.

People who become enemies because somebody signs a different paper in another building.

Ghost could be intelligence.

A long game.

A foreign service trying to identify Vesper.

A private contractor.

A criminal operation.

Someone hired by Blackwell.