Page 46 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

Anton’s jaw tightens, and the man beside him raises his gun toward Celeste.

She moves before he can aim. Her hand disappears into the slit of her dark green gown and comes back with a compact handgun. Not the actions of your average corporate consultant.

She fires once. The armed man jerks sideways as the bullet strikes his shoulder, and the room explodes into motion. Guests scream and scatter. Vale overturns his chair, trying to get away from the table. The ambassador’s daughter dives toward the floor.

Ledger vaults the bar and drives his shoulder into a second armed man. They crash into a shelving unit, bottles raining down around them.

Anton comes for me. I overturn my chair into his knees, then catch his wrist when he grabs for my jacket.

“Where is it?”

“Still obsessed with the poker chip?”

His fist draws back. I trap his wrist, strike his elbow, and shove him into the dealer.

Behind him, another man grabs Celeste’s gun arm. She drives her heel into his foot, twists, and nearly gets free before a second man catches her from behind.

So, Anton didn’t just arrange a blackout. He brought enough people aboard to take control. And if the way he keeps looking between Celeste and my jacket means what I think it does, he needs both of us. The token gets him to Rooke’s door. Celeste has to tell Rooke she opened it.

“Ledger,” I call. “He needs Celeste and the token.”

“Then we don’t let him have both.”

He knocks one man into the doorframe just as another armed guard reaches the exit. I wrench Anton’s arm behind him and shove him hard enough into the edge of the table to buy myself a few seconds.

Celeste is still fighting. “Go!” she snaps at me.

She understands it, too.

If I stay and Anton takes me, I hand him exactly what he wants. And as wrong as leaving this room feels, Ledger and I have a much better chance of helping Celeste if we aren’t trapped in here with half a dozen armed men.

Ledger reaches the doorway first and takes down the guard blocking it. I follow, wrenching the man’s gun aside before he can aim. The shot punches into the ceiling.

A security door begins descending at the far end of the corridor, so we sprint. Ledger slides beneath it, and I dive after him just before it slams into place.

Behind us, someone shouts, “Find Shaw! He has the token!”

Well. At least there’s no ambiguity about our popularity.

“Tell me you have it,” Ledger says as we run toward the aft stairway.

I tap the inside of my jacket. “I have it.”

We reach the stairs and stop when voices sound below us. At least four men are coming up. More footsteps approach from the corridor behind us.

Ledger looks toward a narrow service door marked Crew Only, and we rush through it, closing and locking the door behind us. It’s a storage room, mostly for cleaning supplies, but a small rectangular window sits above a stainless-steel counter, showing the darkening sky outside. I think it’s wide enough for Ledger’s shoulders.

“Not ideal,” he says.

The footsteps grow louder.

I climb onto the counter, force the window open, and cold air floods inside. “After you.”

Ledger gets on the counter and looks out at the narrow maintenance ledge running along the exterior of the yacht. It can’t be more than eight inches wide. His grin appears instantly. “Now it’s ideal.”

We squeeze through one at a time.

The wind tears at my jacket as I flatten myself against the hull, one hand gripping a recessed rail above my head. Water churns fifteen feet below us. The yacht is moving faster now, cutting through the bay toward open water.