The ninth book in the Myron Bolitar series

"YOU don't know her secret," Win said to me.

"Should I?"

Win shrugged.

"It's bad?" I asked.

"Very," Win said.

"Then maybe I don't want to know."

Two days before I learned the secret she'd kept buried for a decade-the seemingly personal secret that would not only devastate the two of us but change the world forever-Terese Collins called me at five AM, pushing me from one quasi-erotic dream into another. She simply said, "Come to Paris."

I had not heard her voice in, what, seven years maybe, and the line had static and she didn't bother with hello or any preamble. I stirred and said, "Terese? Where are you?"

"In a cozy hotel on the Left Bank called d'Aubusson. You'll love it here. There's an Air France flight leaving tonight at seven."

I sat up. Terese Collins. Imagery flooded in-her Class-B-felony bikini, that private island, the sun-kissed beach, her gaze that could melt teeth, her Class-B-felony bikini.

It's worth mentioning the bikini twice.

"I can't," I said.

" Paris," she said.

"I know."

Nearly a decade ago we ran away to an island as two lost souls. I thought that we would never see each other again, but we did. A few years later, she helped save my son's life. And then, poof, she was gone without a trace-until now.