Spy Another Day Prequel Box Set: Spy Noon, Mr. Nice Spy, and Spy by Night in one volume (Spy Another Day Prequels clean romantic suspense trilogy)

by Jordan McCollum

  “How’re rehearsals?” Elliott asks.

  “Grueling. Don’t know how much longer I can keep them up.”

  Before Elliott can reassure me, my phone chimes in my pocket. Not sure who’d be texting after ten (especially not when the most likely culprit is standing in front of me). I pull out my phone.

  My mother. call me.

  Uh oh. It’s an hour earlier where she is, but this is never, ever, good. I bring up the icon to dial, but first, my phone rings. She’s calling.

  “Hello?” I answer.

  “Talia, terrible news.” Her voice carries a dramatic hush.

  Don’t know how to respond, since my mom thinks a houseguest canceling on her is “terrible news” — and she thrives on terrible news.

  “Tyler’s getting divorced.”

  My brain refuses to process that information. “My brother Tyler?” As if she’d be calling about some stranger who happened to be named Tyler.

  “Yes!”

  I can feel the blood draining from my face, leaving my skin cool and clammy. Elliott cocks his head, one eyebrow arched. Yeah, no. I wave him away and cover my other ear, starting for my car.

  “What — what happened?”

  My mom spills what details she knows, as if she understood anything about why marriages fall apart. If she did, she probably wouldn’t have let it happen to her three times, would she? And whatever she’s talking about — Bianca always hated my mother, Tyler couldn’t take the anti-Mom venom — it’s all filtered through her insane lens on the world, where she’s the only person who matters.

  And when it comes down to it, that’s why Tyler’s getting a divorce. Because we were raised to do nothing else. Between my parents arguing for more than a decade and the insanity my mother worked so hard to instill in us, it’s no wonder Tyler’s marriage is falling apart. Like Troy’s did. Like Mom and Dave’s did. Like Mom and Peter’s did. Like Mom and Dad’s did.

  Because we’re doomed to fail. The sick truth rolls over in my stomach, triggering a tide of nausea.

  “Why is this happening?” Mom wails. “What haven’t I done for you guys? Why do you always do this to me?”

  Yeah, Mom, because Tyler’s getting a divorce to punish you. But I’m too numb or too upset to give my mom the pity and feedback she thinks she deserves — as if she’s the only one affected here. I sink into my driver’s seat, saying nothing. What about Tyler and Bianca’s daughter? Mom never mentions Ruby. Typical.

  “Talia?” she finally tries. “Aren’t you listening to me?”

  “Sorry, I’m working late tonight. Thanks for letting me know, but I’ve got a lot going on here.”

  “Talia! I need you! Think of what I’m going through here.” But she’s almost crowing, triumphant at Tyler’s tragedy and how I’ll have to pay attention to her.

  “We’ll talk later.” I end the call.

  I wanted — I needed to get away from her voice. But suddenly it’s too quiet, and my thoughts bounce around the car. Tyler. Bianca. Ruby. What each of them must be going through.

  What all of us went through as kids.

  I try to dodge the thoughts, to focus on the drive and the extra surveillance detection run on the way home. But every time I stop moving, the nagging begins to creep in.

  Tyler. Bianca. Ruby. They’re the latest casualties. Troy. Heather. Dave. Peter. Dad. Trevor. We’ve all fallen under Mom’s control, and we’re all screwed up.

  One more name for the list: Talia.

  After more surveillance detection stops than I bother to count, I find myself staring at my building, unwilling to go inside my apartment, alone with my thoughts. But what can I do? Intrude on Tyler’s pain? Call Troy, who’s still reeling from his own divorce? Talk to Trevor, who thinks I had it easy because I hid in my room most of the time when we lived with Mom?

  Then one last alternative pops into my mind. Before I stop myself, I’m nearly running to my apartment. I dash through my standard search for intruders. Only takes a minute to clear my teeny studio apartment. Then I pull up the contact on my phone and hit the icon to dial.

  “Hello?” he answers.

  “Danny?”

  “Talia, hey.”

  I don’t have the time or the will to try to read into his tone, whether he wants to talk to me or not.

  And I don’t know what I was planning to say. “Sorry to call so late.”

  “Only eleven,” he says. “Everything okay?”

  I release one shaky breath. “No. It’s not — but I don’t want to talk about it, not yet.” I’m more surprised than he is to hear those last two words. Would I ever be okay with telling someone else about Tyler, my crazy family, my mother? It’s all one tangled knot.

  “Okay.”

  “I just . . . I need to be distracted for a while.”

  “I can do that, I guess. But I don’t have any pictures of kittens.”

  In spite of myself, I smile. “I think we’ll manage.”

  “Did I tell you what happened to my phone?”

  “Cooking mishap?”

  “Better tell you the whole story.” He sighs. “I think it’s been long enough I can laugh about this, but I don’t know.”

  Danny continues, and I stretch out on my bed, grateful for this little anchor to a place where cooking your cell phone is the punchline, to a world where I don’t have to think about my messed up family, to sanity.

  To Danny.

  Tuesday, I leave work early. I can only take so much frustration in a day, and my favorite place to unwind closes at five. Luckily, the Aviation and Space Museum is just a couple minutes away.

  The familiar sight of the Arrow doesn’t do enough to erase the stress of work. I don’t think Carol has any intention of letting my wingtip design move forward, though modeling is going well. I stare up at the chopped up jet. My design could end up axed too. Sometimes it’s hard to make progress.

  Speaking of progress, I’m supposed to cook again tonight. I head home and put the crusty, dried breakfast dishes in the sink to make room on the counter for the tortilla chips. I forgot how much you have to get used to with a roommate: someone else’s leftovers, someone else’s dishes and someone else’s music. All the time.

  Maybe I was getting too used to silence. And there are other advantages. Campbell does my dishes sometimes, and he doesn’t mind if I borrow his food occasionally. Especially not if I cook with it.

  That didn’t work out so well with the pork chops or the panko chicken, but the grilled shrimp, steak with gorgonzola, and sweet and sour meatballs were good enough to share. So I did. Just like she promised, Talia’s come to help eat whenever she didn’t have work over the last three weeks, even when the food was awful. But with Captain Third Wheel hanging around, it takes twice as long to lower her shields.

  Tonight, however, he’s still at work, and Talia came here as I was finishing up. I think the only caution in her expression has to do with my latest kitchen experiment. Can’t blame her. “Not really sure about this one,” I explain. “I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store, so I had to make it up as I went along.” And I burned some of it. Not mentioning that.

  “That’s okay.” Talia gets plates out of the cabinet. I mentioned she tried the pork chops, right? “But if you ever need anything, I’m at the grocery store like every day.”

  “Oh, cool. Thanks.”

  She sets the plates on the counter, and now she looks at me. This whole platonic thing would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to see her, and her eyes and her lips and — best to look away.

  “How’re you doing?” She asks like she really wants to know. Obviously that question only brings up the exact reason this definitely isn’t a date. Even after . . . what, almost two months of talking, there are still a couple things I know better than to dump on her.

  Talia frowns in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”

  “No, just frustrating. My mom.”

  “Ah.” She loads her plate with tortilla chips. “Still pushing yo
u to move back home?”

  “We compromised on seeing if I could get approved for a loan. My boss is married to a real estate guy, and he took care of it. Apparently having almost no debt and a good job qualify you for huge piles of cash.”

  “Hard to say no.”

  “Yeah. Guess I was hoping they’d say no, and Mom would back off, but that backfired.” Yep. Resistance is futile. “And now,” I almost laugh, “he’s sending me real estate listings. I’ve told him I’m not looking, but he’s relentless.”

  Talia sighs and turns to the pan of peppers, onions, tomatoes, black beans and slightly blackened corn. Who am I kidding? This isn’t dinner; it’s glorified salsa. Seriously needs meat.

  But Talia doesn’t complain. She spoons some onto her plate, scoops it up with a tortilla chip and takes a bite. She pauses, and my stomach tenses up. Is it that bad?

  “Wow,” she says around her food.

  Crap. It is that bad.

  She chews and swallows. “Have you tried this yet?”

  “No.” Really don’t want to now.

  She picks up another tortilla chip, scoops up the veggie mix and holds it out to me. Fitting punishment for afflicting her with this garbage, I suppose. I lean down, like it’s totally not awkward for her to feed me — and I pick the totally wrong moment to make eye contact.

  I said platonic, right?

  She raises one amused eyebrow. “I meant for you to take the chip.”

  “Oh, right.” I take it and take a bite, and whoa. That isn’t bad. At all. The vegetables mix really well together, and instead of tasting burnt, the char on the corn adds this awesome smoky flavor to the whole thing.

  My face must show my reaction because Talia nods. “I know, right? It’s really good.”

  “It’s really good.” I snag another tortilla chip and salsa from her plate. “Could use some meat — steak.”

  “Oh yeah. But it’s good without too, and you made this. I mean, you made this up.”

  “Yeah.” I look back at the skillet of salsa, and revel in the accomplishment. I. Made. This. And it’s — I’ll say it — amazing.

  Talia’s right. This does feel good. I turn to her again, my smile still lingering.

  Then I realize we have the whole place to ourselves, and we’re standing two feet apart, sharing one plate of food. Alone in the apartment.

  It’s really quiet. Quiet enough I can hear my heartbeat. Maybe Talia’s too.

  Before I think about my next move — or whether I should make a next move — the door opens, and Campbell and Joel troop in. I try not to act guilty, though I’m not sure what I should be guilty for. Nothing happened.

  Was I thinking about something happening?

  “Hey, guys.” Campbell brushes past us. Talia backs up a bit to accommodate the bigger party, as nonchalant as Campbell and Joel.

  Campbell goes right to the bag of chips and scoops salsa straight out of the skillet. Impressive manners in front of a guest. Who’s a girl.

  “Sorry,” I mouth to Talia.

  She holds up four fingers. “Four brothers,” she mouths back.

  As always whenever she mentions something about herself, I correlate that info with everything else she’s told me: three older brothers, one much younger half brother named Timo — which probably means either her parents are divorced or one of them died.

  With someone else, I might want to ask about that, but with Talia, I’m learning to take what she’s ready to share. Six months ago, I would’ve freaked out that there might be a lot more to her than what I see — but now I’m pretty sure “a lot more” doesn’t mean “a lot more insane.”

  “Good stuff.” Campbell points in the pan with his chip before scooping up another bite. “You make this?”

  “Yep.”

  Campbell nods his compliments. He takes out his phone and plugs it into the stereo speakers on the counter. Been home all of two minutes, must be time to flip on music. He scrolls through the playlist and starts something loud and Latin.

  Joel tries the salsa, also right from the pan, and nods his approval too. “Takes me back to the mission.”

  “I thought you guys served in Nebraska,” Talia says.

  “Spanish speaking,” they answer together. Then Campbell starts singing along to the song, dancing in time.

  Talia glances at me. “You don’t speak Spanish, too, do you?”

  “French.”

  “Right. Came in handy in Québec, huh.”

  “Hey!” Joel exclaims. The four of us are all together in this little kitchen, so I shouldn’t be annoyed that he’s jumping in our conversation, but I am. “You should make poutine next.”

  Good idea, actually. I tell him so, but I glimpse Talia’s grimace. “What?” I ask her. “Don’t like poutine?”

  “Can’t take more than a couple fries at a time. Eating them two meals a day for a week straight cures you for life. And then gravy, which is, what, fat and flour?”

  “That’s why it’s good!” Joel insists.

  She wrinkles her nose. “And squeaky cheese — that’s a texture thing.”

  Joel gapes at her. “Are you kidding?”

  She shakes her head, her lips twisted in a sorry, dude.

  “But . . . first of all, the gravy is supposed to be hot enough to melt the cheese curds.”

  At the mention of the apparently offensive food, Talia shudders. I guess the shiver ended with a little shake of her hips — okay, it did, and yes, I noticed. We’re friends; I’m not dead.

  Campbell takes that movement as his cue to cut in. He takes Talia’s plate and sticks it on the counter next to me, then grabs her hands. She falls in step with his dance. He holds up his arm and pivots her underneath, then pulls her close.

  I’m not jealous.

  “This what you did on your mission?” I ask Joel, though we all know this wasn’t allowed.

  “He learned to dance in high school. To meet girls.” Joel’s extra loud, like he’s trying to embarrass Campbell. Don’t think it’ll work, but definitely worth a shot.

  “Ah,” I join in the mocking. “The only thing he’s got going for him.”

  Talia laughs. Good.

  “Is that why you learned to cook?” Campbell shoots back.

  Talia laughs harder. Bad.

  I’m not jealous.

  The song finally ends, and Talia and Campbell exchange compliments. Her cheeks are pink. I don’t know if that’s from dancing, or dancing in front of people, or . . . something else.

  Talia checks the microwave clock. “Better go. Have fun, guys.” She pauses to reach around me for one more scoop of salsa from her plate. I can’t help this little inhale just because she’s really close again. Then she looks up and meets my eyes. “Good job on dinner.”

  “Thanks.” We share a smile, but only for half a second before she turns to Campbell.

  “Thanks for the dance, Cam.”

  Cam? He winks at her, and she leaves.

  Despite what the heat rising in my chest would indicate, I’m. Not. Jealous.

  I’m still telling myself that four hours later as I’m getting ready for bed. Not sure it’s working. First piece of evidence: it’s been four hours, and I’m still telling myself that.

  I finish brushing my teeth and head back to my room to find Campbell stretched out across the ugly ’70s afghan my mother insisted I put on my bed.

  “You need something?” I ask. Despite my not-really-best efforts, my tone’s short.

  Campbell either doesn’t pick up on it or doesn’t care. He sits up. “Is there anything going on between you and Talia?”

  Only in my dreams? Yeah, can’t say that. “Why?”

  “I want to ask her out. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on your toes.” There’s a subtle question in his tone at the end of the sentence, like he’s double-checking Talia and I aren’t secretly dating.

  I could tell him to back off. I could tell him to get lost. I could ask Talia out for real again.

 
; Until I remember her dancing with Campbell. Smiling at him. Blushing. Calling him Cam.

  I may have successfully cooked a few things, but am I ready to date her myself — when she could be into Campbell?

  “Go for it, man,” I tell him, like I’m not hating myself for every syllable.

  “Awesome. We can double.”

  Ooh, can we? “Sure. Now get off my bed.” I manage not to actually, physically kick him out and shut the door behind him with a little too much force.

  Okay, I am jealous. But I can’t hold Talia back, either.

  It’s hard to catch someone doing something they shouldn’t without twenty-four-hour surveillance. Tonight we won’t even have four-hour surveillance until I’ve got to go rehearse with Vasily, but somebody’s got to pick up the slack with Galina. She finishes work at the US Embassy Wednesday evening and I tail her to a coffee shop. I put on a honey blond wig and a spare hat from my emergency disguise stash (AKA the glove box) before I follow her in.

  The coffee shop isn’t Tim Hortons, but the chain has more than personality this place. Nondescript furniture, generic art — even the baked goods selection is boring. The whole shop could be a front, but that’s more elaborate than I think Vasily’s going for. Galina gets a latte; I get a chocolate chip muffin to not eat. She takes a table by the door to set up her laptop.

  That better not be sensitive US information. The Illegals spy ring used a similar setup to broadcast intelligence from their computers to Russian diplomats parked nearby. Should I check the street? My cover purse has my most-used tools, but no Wi-Fi scanner.

  Have to monitor Galina. I take a seat at a table diagonally behind her, close enough to kind of see what she’s doing, but not suspicious-close. I get out my phone to use as a cover (again) while still observing Galina.

  She’s playing a farming game. Seriously? For ten minutes straight, planting crops, working the fields, harvesting, feeding animals. Is this the job of an international spy? (Definitely hasn’t come up in my line of work.)

  I could’ve gotten to my seat too late. Maybe she started a transmission and is playing as a cover. Or they might be using steganography, hidden messages in images or files.