From New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen comes a harrowing and emotional thriller where ghosts of the Cold War return with a vengeance—and cannot be outrun.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen, which releases on August 25th 2026.
When a renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a global affairs conference in Purity, Maine, the tight-knit band of former spies in the Martini Club once again sees their quiet coastal retirement interrupted by international intrigue. And when a waitress at the conference hotel is found murdered, Ingrid Slocum sees chilling links to a disastrous mission that nearly killed her three decades ago.
Desperate to uncover the truth, Ingrid’s drawn back into the game by a magnetic ex-CIA colleague—and former lover—who was with her on the long-ago doomed mission. He convinces her to join him, and together they head to Amsterdam to track down her would-be killer.
Ingrid’s frantic husband Lloyd and Maggie Bird are close behind, but a clandestine network of assassins is intent on stopping them. Forced to question every allegiance, the Martini Club must rely on the skills they tried to leave behind. Because in this game of revenge and deception, the past never dies—it just hides in the shadows.
CHAPTER ONE
INGRID
Her life was not supposed to end this way. Then again, in her profession, one never knew how it would end. She had hoped her final exit would happen many years in the future, and it would be painless, perhaps while she dozed in a rocking chair with a fire gently crackling in the hearth and a cat purring on her lap. Or perhaps the end would be heralded by a crushing pain in her chest after one last triumphant climb up a mountain. She had not expected it to come today, with so many years of life still ahead of her, and not in this old stone house, amid the fields of blooming lavender. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place to die. Through the window, framed by ancient wooden shutters, she could see the hills of Provence, cloaked in the golden haze of summer. The air that wafted in through that window was perfumed with the scent of flowers. This was a day that should be savored, a day to sip pastis in the nearby village and nibble on olives and peanuts.
Instead, she would die trapped in a bedroom with a wounded young woman who was bleeding to death beside her. Ingrid had locked the door and had desperately shoved furniture against it to stave off the invaders, but those pitiful barriers would not hold them off for long. Already, the men were battering against it, and while the door was solid, made of centuries-old oak, eventually the attackers would burst through. For Ingrid, death would probably come swiftly, with two merciful bullets in the head.
But for Sophie . . .
“Cannot—cannot breathe,” Sophie whispered.
Ingrid looked down at the woman she had been assigned to protect. Sophie was barely a woman, really, only twenty-two years old, but blessed—some would say cursed—with the courage of a warrior. She had trusted the Agency to keep her alive, had believed all their assurances that Moscow would never find her in this safe house, tucked away in a quiet corner of Provence.
And for weeks, they had kept Sophie safe. While Ingrid’s colleagues in Paris and Marseille had worked to dismantle the Russian syndicate, Sophie and Ingrid had felt secure enough here to venture outside every morning to pick flowers and sip coffee in the garden. Who would think to look for Sophie in this old stone farmhouse at the end of a private dirt road? To even access the road, an attacker would first have to contend with Ingrid’s two Agency colleagues, stationed in the gatehouse at the top of the road. With these safeguards in place, and their location classified, no one should’ve been able to find them.
But somehow, they had been found.
Their first warning had been a curl of dust spiraling up in the distance, kicked into the air by the tires of an approaching vehicle. All vehicles first had to be cleared by Simon and Gordon, the two agents in the gatehouse, but Ingrid had received no heads-up from her colleagues about a visitor. She’d radioed the men to confirm.
No one answered.
She’d called out to Sophie, who was crouched in the garden, snipping a bundle of lavender stalks. With her straw hat and summer-streaked blond hair, Sophie looked like a winsome country girl, happily flushed from the sun, without a care in the world. The way a young woman should look while spending her summer in France. Contented. Unafraid.
“Sophie, go in the house,” Ingrid had said.
Sophie looked up, and when she saw Ingrid’s face, she quickly rose to her feet. Now she, too, spotted the fantail of dust rising from the road. “Who is coming?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Go inside.”
At once Sophie dropped the bundle of lavender stalks that she’d so lovingly harvested and she retreated into the house.
Again, Ingrid radioed the gatehouse. Again, there was no response.
The dust cloud kept moving closer. She could now see it was a black SUV, and it was moving fast. Something is wrong, she thought. She followed Sophie into the house, barred the door, and issued a Mayday to her backup team in the village.
Then she grabbed the rifle.
Through the rifle scope, she watched the SUV roar closer. She could make out the silhouettes of five heads inside the vehicle. She kept her rifle aimed at the driver, but she held her fire because the situation was still unclear. They could be friendlies. There could have been a comm failure. Her finger twitched on the trigger.
The SUV skidded to a stop in front of the house. Four men stepped out. Armed, dressed in black.
Definitely not friendlies.
She fired and took down one man. The others immediately scrambled for cover behind the vehicle. A barrage of return fire shattered the kitchen window and glass exploded into the room, clattering across the floor.
“Sophie!” she yelled. “Go upstairs!”
No answer.
She turned and saw the young woman, her face pale and contorted in pain, slowly sliding down against the blood-spattered wall.
“Sophie!”
More bullets tore into the kitchen and thudded into the cabinets. Wineglasses and chinaware disintegrated.
As Ingrid scrambled toward Sophie, shrapnel bit into her leg, and warm blood trickled down her skin. Even as she dodged the hail of gunfire, her focus was only on Sophie. Get her out of the room. Out of the line of fire.
She grabbed Sophie around the waist, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and pulled the young woman out of the kitchen. There was no escape route from this house. Their only option was to retreat upstairs to one of the bedrooms, bar the door, and hope that rescue arrived in time. Sophie’s legs had gone limp, and she was little more than deadweight as Ingrid hauled her up the narrow staircase. By the time they reached the second floor, Ingrid was dragging her, leaving a trail of blood on the floorboards.
From downstairs came the sound of pounding, kicking. How long would the door hold?
Not long enough.
Ingrid pulled Sophie into the upstairs bedroom and laid her on the floor. The young woman’s blouse was saturated with blood and she was gasping for air, but Ingrid had no time to attend to her wounds. A blast shook the house.
They had plastic explosives.
She bolted the bedroom door and shoved a dresser and chair against it. Scrambled behind the bed and crouched against the mattress with her rifle aimed at the door. The first one through that door would be a dead man.
“Please . . . help . . .”
Ingrid reached out and touched Sophie’s hand. Already it felt like the hand of a corpse, the warmth of life draining away. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.
Voices shouted downstairs in the kitchen. Russian. They were inside the house. Footsteps thudded up the stairs. Her finger was already squeezing the trigger, ready to fire, as they banged on the bedroom door. Each blow shook the dresser, her last pitiful line of defense. Her heart was banging as well, like a wild animal trying to beat its way out of her chest. It would not take long for them to break through. She could take down the first one or two of them, but there was only one way this would end. The syndicate demanded it. Sophie, who’d dared to betray them, must now suffer the consequences.
As Ingrid leaned into the mattress, her finger poised to fire, she thought about all the pleasures she would never live to enjoy, the breaths she would never take, the sunsets she would never witness. She thought about the man who waited for her at home, the man with whom she could have spent the rest of her life. Gone, those possible futures, all gone. Now it was down to these final moments, the invaders pounding at the door, the sweat trickling down her cheek like a warm teardrop. How many rounds were left in her rifle? She didn’t know, but she would keep firing as long as she was able to, as long as she had bullets. Make them pay dearly. Make them . . .
The blast splintered wood, sent shrapnel flying. The shock wave threw her backward, and her head slammed against the wall. For a moment she saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. No discomfort, just the black numbness of death. Then, faint and distant, the staccato of gunfire. Men shouting. Footsteps.
They are coming. Here it ends.
“Ingrid.”
She drew in a shuddering breath, and pain stabbed her ribs, sharp as a blade. Pain meant she was alive. Pain meant they weren’t finished with her yet.
“Ingrid!”
She opened her eyes. To her wonder, she saw a face she knew well, a face that was now staring down at her in panic. Rodrigo’s black hair was powdered with a layer of dust, and his cheek was spattered with blood. Not his blood, she realized, but another man’s.
“Help her,” whispered Ingrid. “Help Sophie.”
He gave a sorrowful shake of the head and looked away. She followed his gaze to the body lying nearby.
In life, Sophie had been a pale and luminous beauty, but beneath her seeming fragility was tempered steel. For almost a year, she had gone unnoticed while embedded within a viper’s nest of men who made their fortunes from death and destruction. She had been listening, always listening, as those men talked freely about the deals they’d made, the rivals they’d eliminated. None of those men could imagine that the harmless and insignificant girl they’d hired to serve their drinks, adorn their yachts, would be the Trojan horse that would bring them down. Ingrid herself had been dubious when a troubled Sophie first approached the Agency with information about the syndicate. Damning information that she’d gleaned while she’d hovered silently in the background. To the syndicate, she was just another pretty face, like so many others that could always be found orbiting powerful men. Unlike the others, though, Sophie had been paying attention and taking notes. She had come to understand, with growing horror, who these men were and the brutal violence they were capable of.
I’m sorry. Ingrid reached out to Sophie’s lifeless body. Oh God, I’m sorry.
“Ingrid.” Rodrigo gently tugged on her arm. “There’s nothing you can do here. Come, let me take you to the village.”
“How did this happen? How did they find us?”
“I don’t know.”
“We had no warning. Why didn’t our men warn us?”
There was a silence. She looked up and saw his pained expression.
“What happened to them? Where are Simon and Gordon?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Both of them?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Just tell me!”
“If you really want to know,” he said quietly, “I’ll show you.”
*
She should not have asked. Far better to have read the details in some dry autopsy report, or to hear about it second- or third-hand, to put as much distance as she could from this bloody reality. But now that she was staring at the carnage, these images would be forever imprinted in her memory.
Gordon would have been taken down first. His body was lying outside the stone guardhouse, sprawled at the edge of the garden, his blood soaking into the soil. Life’s nutrients, returning to the earth to nourish next year’s blossoms. The instrument of death was still implanted in Gordon’s left orbit. It was a stiletto, an elegant and efficient tool made of stainless steel. Some sort of symbol was engraved on the handle: a small circle with a dot inside. A minimalist design, like the weapon itself. It would have been a mercifully quick death—at least she hoped it was. One stab would have driven the tip of the stiletto through the eye socket and straight into the brain. Gordon would not have suffered long.
The same could not be said for Simon.
He, too, must have been taken by surprise, because his gun was lying off in the corner, where it had probably been kicked during the fight. The room smelled of carnage, the stink of sweat and desperation. The wall was covered with fantails of blood, sprayed there from his severed carotid artery as he’d turned and twisted. From the doorway, Ingrid surveyed the blood, splashed like scarlet streamers around the room, and imagined Simon slip-sliding through those pools. He had been the fair-haired kid on their team, only twenty-eight and happy to have escaped the small and unexciting town in Texas where he’d grown up. Now he’d be returning to that town in a box.
She turned and walked away.
Outside in the garden, she took deep breaths, emptying her lungs of the stench. A hot wind swept down the valley, bringing with it the scent of summer-warmed grass and lavender. She heard Rodrigo’s footsteps crunching toward her across the gravel.
“What about the men who did this?” she asked.
“We’ve secured the location. They’re all dead,” said Rodrigo. “We took care of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“You saw their bodies.”
She thought back to the blood and chaos left behind in the farmhouse. She remembered two men lying dead on the stairs, a third body sprawled on the kitchen floor. And there’d been a fourth one in the yard, where Ingrid had brought him down with her rifle shots. She recalled their black SUV roaring up to the farmhouse, and the view she’d had through her rifle scope of the occupants inside that vehicle.
“There’s someone missing,” she said.
Rodrigo frowned at her. “What?”
“I saw four bodies at the house.”
“Yes. That’s all of them.”
“But there were five people in the SUV.”
“No, we killed them all. There were four.”
“And no one escaped?”
“Trust me, there was no fifth man.”
“But I could swear—”
“Ingrid.” He touched her face, his fingers lingering on her cheek. “You caught the blast from that door. When I found you, you were barely conscious. Can you really be certain of what you saw?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, and clutched her head. It was still throbbing from the blast, and she tried to rub away the ache, the failure. “I just need to be sure. I owe it to Gordon and Simon. And Sophie . . .”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Come. Let me take you back to the hotel.”
Suddenly exhausted, she sagged against him. They had once been lovers, and even though she had ended it a year ago, the contours of his body still felt familiar. They’d seemed well matched in so many ways, the way her head tucked so perfectly under his chin, even the way the rhythm of their breathing seemed aligned. But that was before she’d really known him. Before she’d come to realize that she was just one in a long line of Rodrigo’s conquests. This fire between them, so bright and hot, would inevitably burn out, leaving nothing but ashes.
She stared down at Gordon’s body and thought about all the memories that blade had destroyed as it sank into his brain. All the laughter, all the dreams. All the love. “His son just turned twelve,” she said softly. “Gordon showed me his photo the other day. Told me how rotten he felt about missing the boy’s birthday. And his wife. Oh God, Vicky . . .”
“This isn’t the time to think about it.”
“When is the time?” She looked up at Rodrigo. “Or will there never be a good time? Do we just shove it into the closet and forget it? The way we forget everything else?”
He took her arm. “You need to rest.”
“No. What I really need is to go home.”
“Yes. I think that’s a good idea. You should fly home. Take as much time as you need, and come back when you feel ready.” He caressed her cheek. “But please,” he said with a smile. “Don’t be gone for too long.”
She caught his wrist and gently lowered his hand. “To be honest, there’s another reason I need to go home for a while.”
“What reason?”
She turned and looked up the road at the safe house. At what should have been a safe house but instead had turned into a place of slaughter. “I thought I was going to die there. And that’s when I realized what I want to live for. Who I want to live for. I need to tell him, while I still have the chance.”
“Him?” Rodrigo frowned. “You can’t mean that analyst you’ve been talking about?”
“That’s exactly who I mean.”
“Are you really going home to that—that desk jockey?”
“That desk jockey loves me.” In ways that you never will, she thought.
“And is that enough?”
“Love?” She looked at him and gave a sad laugh. “You really don’t understand it, do you?”
“I understand that you and I have something special.”
“And how long would that last?”
“Long enough.” He tilted up her head and looked straight into her eyes. “Admit it, Ingrid. You’d miss me, wouldn’t you? How long will it take for you to get bored with him? Maybe not this year or next year, but eventually you will be. He has no idea what our world is like. He spends all day at his desk and goes home every night, to what? Dinner and a video?”
“That’s starting to sound pretty damn good.”
“You know what does sound good?” He pulled her closer, so close their bodies were pressed against each other. “A hotel room. A glass of champagne . . .”
She stepped away. “I’ll write my report tonight, and it will be on your desk tomorrow, for the cable. And then I’m going to apply for a transfer.” She looked down one last time at Gordon. Poor Gordon would never have the chance to grow old, but she would. And she didn’t want to do it alone. “Goodbye, Rodrigo. I’ll invite you to the wedding.” She turned and walked away.
“I won’t come!” he called.
“Suit yourself.”
“I hate to watch tragedies!”
“Not a tragedy.” She paused and glanced back at him. “A happy ending.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know.
Copyright © 2026 by Tess Gerritsen. From THE SHADOW FRIENDS by Tess Gerritsen. Reprinted by permission of Thomas & Mercer, a division of Amazon Publishing.
