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“Is he all right?” Sophie asked.

“He said he was. He said to stay here, he’ll be here in half an hour.”

Those thirty minutes were some of the longest of my life.

Finally, we heard Code at the door. I jumped up off the stool, knocking it over. I sprinted across the room, only stopping at the last second. What if it wasn’t him?

“It’s me. Let me in,” I heard him say on the other side of the door.

Relief flooded through me. Sophie was standing right behind me as I undid the locks and the door flew open.

“We’ve got to leave. Now,” he said.

“Your face! My God, what happened?” I asked.

But he was looking at Sophie. “You’re coming with us.”

“What? I can’t⁠—”

“You don’t have a choice. We don’t have time for you to pack a bag, just grab your purse, your wallet, your passport if you have one.”

“Oh my God.” She went completely pale.

“Go,” Code ordered, his voice sounding almost ragged. Sophie yelped and headed for her bedroom. “I’m getting my passport,” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Code,” I said, taking his arm. “Please, tell me what happened. Are you all right?”

“Later,” he said. “We’ve got to get to a safe house.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else? You seem⁠—”

He cut me off with a deep kiss.

The safe house was in Koreatown, tucked between a dry cleaner’s and a restaurant. Code pulled into an underground parking garage beside the restaurant and killed the engine.

"Simon uses this place?"

"Friend of his owns it. Keeps it for situations like this." He grabbed his laptop bag from the back seat beside Sophie and winced.

I caught the movement. Something was wrong, something other than his swollen face.

We quickly walked past the restaurant to the tiny walk-up apartment building and went inside. We took the stairs to the third floor. Code moved carefully, his breathing shallow. The apartment was small but clean. Generic furniture, no personal touches, the kind of place designed to be forgettable.

Code unlocked the door, then punched numbers into a panel on the wall, disabling the alarm. He locked the door behind us, engaged two deadbolts and a chain, and reset the alarm. He set up his laptop on the dining table. Sophie crossed her arms over her torso and looked around, looking terrified.

I stood in the middle of the living room and crossed my arms. "Now tell me what the hell happened. All of it."

He looked up from his laptop. "Katherine."

"Don't you ‘Katherine’ me. You left Sophie's apartment four hours ago. You came back with a bruise the size of a grapefruit on your jaw, and you're moving like you're eighty years old. So, talk."

He closed the laptop and leaned back into the chair. "The house in Laurel Canyon wasn't empty."

My stomach dropped. "Russell was there?"

"No. Two Russian operatives were there. Searching the place."

Russian. My throat went dry.