Quinton Mann is CIA through and through. Mark Vincent is WBIS for life. There is no way they could end up as anything other than adversaries -- and yet, Quinn takes Mark out to dinner on his birthday -- the one no one is supposed to know about -- and gives him one hell of a present in the restaurant's restroom. Mark, not to be outdone, has decided to escalate this game, because it has to be a game, right? There's no way it can be anything else.<br><br>But as the game continues, as Quinn shows up to a WBIS funeral, as a friend of Mark’s penetrates the CIA computer network to get information on Quinn, as Mark breaks into Quinn's house and gives Quinn a very interesting encounter, both Quinn and Mark realize that this is becoming the most real thing in their lives.<br><br>Can they find a way to do their jobs and keep this surprising, intriguing connection?

Houseboat on the Nile

We were somewhere in Calais, me and the asshole who’d pissed off Lynx, in a warehouse that had been abandoned for quite some time.


For a moment, I thought back to the previous summer, to the warehouse on the Patapsco River, where Mann had thought to do a meet and buy with a scientist who’d contracted to work for Huntingdon and had panicked when he’d realized that to work for that corporation was actually to work for the WBIS.


I’d told Buonfiglio, the mole we had in the CIA, that I’d deal with it. I hadn’t trusted him any farther than I could throw him. If he’d betray the Company, the odds were he’d betray the WBIS as well.


The figure slumped in the chair moaned as he began to regain consciousness, and I was recalled to the present. I removed the protective gloves I had covering my hands and flexed my fingers.


“The man whose computer program you fucked with doesn’t want you dead. You should be grateful for that.”


Chapter 25