“Not anymore.” Brenda pulled a sleek phone from her bra. “The Serpent is back. He’s built a new network, and he’s targeting the suburb of Oak Grove for a test run—a dirty bomb hidden in the elementary school. Detonation: 3:00 PM. That’s four hours.”

“Because you’re already here,” Brenda said. “And because your file says you’re the only operative to ever get inside his head.”

It was a truth universally acknowledged in the intelligence community that a stay-at-home mom in the suburbs was the perfect undercover operative. No one ever suspected the woman who packed juice boxes and folded tiny socks of being able to disable a bomb with a bobby pin.

Brenda raised an eyebrow. “Glitter glue?”

She smiled. And for the first time in a decade, she didn’t feel like a ghost. She felt like a woman who had saved the world between soccer practice and bedtime.

That was the problem. After ten years of marriage, three of them deep undercover as a wife , Ellie had become her disguise. The Agency had stopped calling. Her handler, a chain-smoking cynic named Harris, had retired to a shrimp boat in the Gulf. She was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost.

“Big day here, too,” Ellie said, pouring his coffee. “Mia has a playdate. Leo has a dentist appointment. And I have to figure out why the neighbor’s new ‘gardening shed’ has thermal signatures consistent with a small missile launcher.”

The Serpent laughed. “What are you going to do, offer me a snack?”