“It was one of the Hilton sisters.”

“Oh, so you keep up with the gossip? How does a spy have time to read The Buzz?”

“Actually, I didn’t read about it. I was there.”

“No kidding? You know the Hilton sisters?” Lucy had always been starstruck.

She’d been addicted to celebrity magazines since junior high and had fantasized about someday being one of the beautiful people-or at least hanging out with them.

She’d learned the hard way that the celebrity scene wasn’t all parties and glamour. In fact, beneath all the glitz, it could get pretty rotten. But even after her unhappy brush with that life, she hadn’t lost her fascination with it.

Bryan didn’t answer, but he pulled his car around a corner and into an underground garage, inserting a pass card to gain entrance.

“Um, we’re not actually stopping to eat, are we?” Lucy asked, looking down at her orange polyester pants. “I mean, I’d love to go to that restaurant someday, but they wouldn’t let me in the door dressed like this.”

He grinned. “I could get you in. But, no, we’re not going there right now. This is actually your safe house.” He pulled into a reserved parking space and cut the engine.

“Seems a funny place for a safe house,” she commented. “I thought we’d be a little more…isolated.”

“A safe house can be anywhere, so long as no one knows about it.” He led her through a door that was marked Entrance Une Nuit. But once inside a small, featureless foyer, they didn’t follow the signs to the restaurant. They boarded a rickety-looking elevator. Bryan pushed a button that had no floor number on it.

“Password, please,” came a computerized voice.

“Enchilada coffee,” Bryan replied. The elevator started up.

The amazement on Lucy’s expressive face gave Bryan a rush of pleasure, and he had to admit that, despite the gravity of his situation, he was enjoying Lucy’s reactions. He’d expected her to be a basket case, a perpetually panicked paranoid. But she’d risen to the occasion, showing a presence of mind few civilians possessed.