Neva is an agent with the Network.
Michael Kensington is an agent with MI5.
Though Neva is given the title position by me, both star in this series and deserve explaining
The Network is a commercial business, a company that earns its living by ending the living of others, for a price and hopefully a profit. It is headquartered in the United Kingdom and basically that is its work zone but it would like to advance to a higher rung and be considered international in scope but that will mean its agents have to produce more.
Working for the Network as she does, technically, of course, Neva is not an operative; she is an assassin. She kills people at the direction of the Network and has for some time. She has been taught since she can remember to not question her orders, not to ponder why a target is picked and thus 'needed' to die. She only had the luxury of figuring out how best to carry out the directed terminations and then hopefully get away herself. "She is a killer for hire and her reputation precedes her work. Death is simply a process by which she gets paid. It brings no delight. It gives her no emotion at all."
"Youthful. Innocent, big blue eyes are framed with perfectly shaped brows. Her hair is long and golden blonde - some would call it strawberry. She's the very picture of mental and physical health. Her bone structure is faultless, cheekbones defined to model excellence, jawline pronounced. She's a natural beauty but she's simple too; with the right make-up and clothing she can be instantly forgettable."
Through the use of wigs of various sizes and colors, contact lenses of different colors, and her innate ability to change 'personalities' as needed, her skill at blending in and disappearing is frighteningly good. Add to that the skill she has shown to go deep undercover and assume an identity for weeks on end if the mission calls for it, and you end up with a woman who is almost a chameleon.
She is also a woman who, when we first meet her, has come to the sad realization that hers is not career with long term potential. As a fellow agent confides to her, "They retire us all in the end. It's an ironic reward for our loyalty. You always believe you won't be next. Then, some psych evaluation you fail, or some small indiscretion, a display of inquisitiveness, a split second when you question the whole thing. They know. I don't know how, but they always know."
Michael Kensington is a highly skilled and experience profiler working with MI5. When we first meet him he has been transferred to a cold case department within that organization called Archive and it is there that he will work to handle investigations that have languished due to no new information and try to find that data with a fresh set of eyes.
He will become involved in the life of Neva when he starts to notice a pattern in several murders for which there was no discernable culprit and once he starts looking, the more he slowly peels back the covers and sees the truth. This, naturally, can be a very dangerous activity because people like Neva do not appreciate being noticed and remembered.
Both will find their lives forever intertwined when Neva decides it is time to rebel and try to take down the Network even as Kensington starts to see that such an organization actually exists.