Smokeshow

Rich men can’t help but want Rory Campbell. She’s charming, obliging, and obscenely beautiful. But if she seems too good to be true, that’s because she is.

Rory Campbell is on a date with a man she actually likes. Nolan is charming, kind, and devastatingly earnest—a rare combination in her line of work. She’s more used to men like the Silicon Valley billionaires who openly ogle her breasts as they monologue about tech. Like Murphy, her ethically non-monogamous boyfriend who cares more about the plight of the working class than he does their relationship. Or like her father, who’s serving prison time for murdering her mother. Rorys used to the men in her life being scummy at best and scary at worst—really, she can only rely on her stepmom, Suze, a true crime obsessive who took her in and never let go. But well-meaning corporate executive Nolan is refreshingly normal—maybe even trustworthy.

That would make one of them: her name isn’t Rory, it’s Paula. And he’s not just a date—he’s a target.

Years earlier, Murphy brought Paula onboard The Project: a covert network of activists hellbent on taking down corrupt capitalists through targeted espionage. Paula’s job: infiltrate, extract, disappear. She’s done it dozens of times before, but this time, nothing is going to plan. The Project goes quiet and Paula is left improvising in a city she barely knows, killing time with the man she’s supposed to be killing.

But as Nolan’s nefarious employer closes in, Paula begins to suspect that she may be a pawn in a much larger game than she realized. She’s given Nolan no reason to trust her, but finds herself hoping he will anyway, in this cat-and-mouse game where falling for the wrong person could be the most dangerous move of all.