Prologue

Seventy-Two Hours Into the Job

The greatest problem with loving a con artist is never knowing which kiss is real.

The greater problem is discovering the answer while the vault is counting down to detonation.

“Forty-seven seconds,” the automated voice announces. “Omega security lockdown engaged.”

Red light sweeps across Silas Thorne’s face.

He is kneeling on the marble floor with his hands bound behind his back, his lip split and his white tuxedo shirt stained with blood. Even like this, he smiles at me as though we have merely escaped a tedious party instead of being trapped beneath thirty meters of concrete with enough explosives to erase the building from Veridia’s skyline.

“I told you,” Silas says, “your plan had a flaw.”

I drop to my knees beside the control panel and plug my decoder into the lock. “And I told you to shut up.”

“That was the flaw.”

“Forty seconds.”

Strings of code race across my screen. Behind the bulletproof glass to my left sits the Nocturne Diamond, the declared objective of tonight’s performance. A black stone no larger than an egg, worth enough to purchase the loyalty of a small government.

But we were never here for the diamond.

At least, I wasn’t.

I came here to bury Silas.

Three years ago, he sold out my crew in a warehouse beside the river. When the smoke cleared, I had lost two people, the network I spent a decade building, and the ability to believe anyone could touch me without hiding a knife behind their back.

I survived for this day.

I selected the target. Designed the job. Planted the clues Silas could never resist. Every exit, camera, and bullet was calculated to bring him to this vault.

The place where he would die with that infuriating smile on his face.

There was only one detail I failed to calculate.

I am trapped in here too.

“Thirty-two seconds.”

“The code isn’t working,” I mutter.

“I know.”

My fingers stop above the keys. “What did you say?”

Silas rests one shoulder against a security cabinet and watches the red numbers fall. “It’s a decoy cipher. The system switched to biometric authorization the moment we entered.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since you kissed me in the elevator.”

I spin toward him. “You knew and came inside anyway?”

“It was a very convincing kiss.”

I rise, draw the pistol strapped to my thigh, and aim between his eyes.

Silas’s smile widens.

“There she is,” he says. “That’s the Elara Vance I remember.”

“Twenty-four seconds.”

“Tell me how to open the door.”

“Untie me.”

“Tell me first.”

“And here we are, back to our little trust problem.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Of course not. You only pretended to love me in front of three hundred guests, sat on my lap to copy my fingerprint, and kissed me long enough to forget the cameras were rolling.” He tilts his head. “Perfectly professional.”

I chamber a round.

Silas looks at the gun. At last, his smile fades.

“Nineteen seconds.”

“Shoot me and you still die in here.”

“At least half my plan succeeds.”

“No.” His gaze locks with mine. “If you truly wanted me dead, you would not have come back.”

My heart misses a beat somewhere beneath the alarms.

When the vault door started closing, I had been outside.

I had six seconds to run.

But through the narrowing gap, I saw one of the target’s gunmen bring Silas down. He could take care of himself. Silas always took care of himself. I had spent three years believing that so I could sleep without remembering the blood and smoke in the warehouse.

And still, I came back.

I slipped through the door before it sealed, shot the gunman, and locked myself in with the man I intended to kill.

An unforgivable error.

Or a truth I am not ready to name.

“Fourteen seconds.”

Silas slowly opens his hands.

The metal restraint falls to the floor.

I stare at it, then at him. “How long have you been free?”

“Since you pointed the gun at me.” He rises. “I wanted to see if you would fire.”

“Bastard.”

“That is why you hired me.”

“Ten seconds.”

Silas reaches into his tuxedo and removes the gold-plated Zippo I gave him before the job. He flips it open. There is no flame. Beneath the striker wheel, a tiny green light pulses.

I recognize it, and my blood turns cold.

“That isn’t a communicator,” I say.

“No.”

“You switched it.”

“Also no.” Silas approaches the control panel. “You gave me a biometric detonator and hoped I would activate it in the correct position to complete your trap.”

He presses his thumb to the lighter’s case.

The light changes from green to red.

“But you forgot that I am the man who taught you how to build traps.”

“Six seconds.”

A deep explosion sounds somewhere above us. Not the vault—the backup power station. The lights vanish. The electromagnetic lock releases with a dry metallic crack.

In the darkness, Silas catches me around the waist.

“The door will open for three seconds,” he says against my mouth.

“Then run.”

“One more thing.”

He kisses me.

There is no audience to deceive. No camera to convince. No fingerprint to steal.

Only his mouth, hot against mine, his hand locked at the small of my back, and three years of hatred burning as though it has never been anything but hunger.

Then he releases me just as the vault door springs open.

“Which plan,” I breathe, “was that kiss part of?”

Silas drags me into the dark corridor. Behind us, the counter reaches zero.

“Not yours,” he says.

The explosion devours the rest of his answer.