But that’s not what I’m afraid of anymore. I dust off my courage and grab hold. He’s already dumped me, after all. I don’t have anything left to lose.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say over the water’s roar. “You know, in the vast amounts of free time I’ve had to lay around and stew.”
“Oh yeah, it’s been so boring.”
“It was awful.” I smile, but I can’t hold on to it. “I’ve been thinking about everything we said last night, and I have to tell you the truth.”
The look on his face, the wide, searching eyes, the tension around his lips, is pure fear.
Not what I want to see. “The truth is that you were right.”
His gaze falters and falls, but I press on. “I wasn’t fighting for us like I should’ve. I wasn’t making us enough of a priority.”
Danny borrows Will’s eyebrow-nod.
“But I have to tell you why.” I take a deep breath and plunge ahead. “I was scared.”
“Scared? What are CIA agents scared of?”
“Officers,” I correct again. I get this a lot, or I’m sure I would, if I ever told anyone where I work. “You know the stuff with my mom and dad — I mean, they couldn’t see each other without shouting until I was in college. Not to mention my mom’s marriages. And didn’t I tell you ‘never’ when it came marriage?”
“Not in so many words.”
No, I made that very clear from the beginning. “Huh?”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you use the word marriage. Not talking about yourself.”
“Oh. Well. Firsts for everything tonight. Today.”
“Anyway.” Danny extends a go-on hand.
And I go on. “In the last couple months, I’ve seen people do stupid stuff because of their families and get other people in trouble, and I think I was afraid to become that risk.”
He turns to the river. “Okay.” The cascading water can’t conceal the I have no idea what you’re trying to say in his voice.
“Elliott.”
Danny turns to me with anxiety in his eyes. I rush to add, “Elliott was doing dumb things. Because his wife was having a baby. Last night.”
“Oh.” Surprise registers in his voice. One tiny victory for OPSEC: even Danny didn’t know.
Yeah, because keeping things from him counts as “victory” now.
“I got to see those dumb things firsthand,” I continue. “I mean, sometimes I was the one put in danger. I couldn’t do that to the rest of my team.”
His gaze drops back to the water. “Yeah. Danger.”
My stomach feels like we’re starting the climb after takeoff. I’m not doing this right. I have to keep trying. “But tonight — last night.” I glance at the sunrise. “I . . . I don’t know. We were out there in the water, risking our lives for people who’ll never know, and it just didn’t seem worth it anymore. Not if I had to put you in danger.”
“So, what, you’re quitting?” His tone holds no uptick of optimism.
“No. I mean, that hadn’t occurred to me. I hate to bring up Elliott again, but that was one problem he didn’t have last night. All this time, I’ve thought Shanna — Elliott’s wife — was a liability. But if I’d ever bothered to ask Elliott, I think he would have listed her at the top of his assets. She’s a daily reminder of the reason we’re all operating out here: for freedom and country and family. She keeps him focused. She was what kept him going.”
He still doesn’t look at me, but Danny nods extra slowly. Like I’m not making sense.
Of course I’m not. I’m trying to talk about this in the vaguest terms so I don’t have to put too much of myself out there, I don’t have to take one more risk.
One little snippet of my time with Fyodor comes ringing back. Isn’t love worth the risk?
It’s time — time for me to make the biggest leap of my life. A breeze makes me feel like I’m flying off a boat yet again, and I throw my nerve into the wind. “I guess my point is . . . I’m an idiot. I thought it was a disadvantage, and I was better than that. But I’m not, and loving someone isn’t weakness.”
His head snaps up so fast he might give himself whiplash. “What?”
I can’t tell whether that alarm is good or bad. The zero gravity bottoms out and I take the plunge. “Danny, I can speak four languages—” He raises an eyebrow, but I don’t stop — “scale ventilation shafts, and take out foreign intelligence officers. But I don’t know if all the skills in the world are enough without something — someone — to keep me going.”
“What are you saying?” This time, I think the little lift in his voice is hope.
“Well . . . Shanna doesn’t know exactly what Elliott does on any given day, but she knows what he’s doing, and he can come home every day and see her face and know what he’s doing is worth it. Anyone who has that knows what it is to fight, because they’ve got something worth fighting for.”
And Will could not have been more wrong.
I rush on, picking up speed into the dive, before the three Gs in my stomach can stop me. “And tonight it hit me that I almost had that, and I’m not ready to give it up.”
Danny turns his head half an inch away to regard me from the corner of his eye with caution. “Then why didn’t you tell me before? Or anytime tonight?”
“Well, a.) I’m just putting this together now, but also b.) I was afraid to because . . . Danny, you are who you are all the time, and I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be, while I’m with the CIA.”
“What do you mean, I am who I am? Who else would I be?”
Duh, this has never crossed his mind. Someone that genuine would never have to think about it. “I mean . . . you don’t care about putting up a front for other people. You’re just you, all the time. I see it in every smile and—” The streetlight behind us flickers off and I falter. I haven’t made the final leap yet.
My gaze falls to the locks beyond Danny, but I readjust my grip on my gravity-flattened stomach and my courage. “I want to see those smiles every day, for the rest of forever. I do love you, and maybe it hasn’t been enough in the past — but please give me another chance to fight.”
Once I dare to look back at him, a smile dawns on his face, creeping in as subtly as the gold shades reflecting off the water. “Really?”
And I’m finally done with lies. “Yes. Really. I can’t promise it won’t suck like this week has — sometimes — but I’ll tell you when it’ll be like that. And I will fight for us.”
His smile leaps from a flicker of hope to Danny’s trademark, full-blown, eye-crinkling, Talia-melting grin, and I can’t help but mirror it. Then he holds up a hand like a warning. “I don’t have a big musical number planned, so I probably won’t be able to top that speech.”
Okay, I guess it was pretty good, but it’s not a competition. Before I can say that, Danny shifts and pulls out the now-slightly dingy mahogany ring box.
I didn’t think I could smile more, but my cheek muscles tremble with the strain of my sustained grin (or maybe it’s the tears).
“Wanna get married?”
Seriously? “Danny.” My tone conveys the you gotta do better than that.
He laughs, but quickly composes himself like he’s about to give a serious speech. “I know marriage freaks you out, but I couldn’t imagine my life without you. And then I didn’t have to imagine it, and it was like knowing the Earth was about to stop spinning. The sun wouldn’t rise, and we’d all go flying sideways at sixteen hundred kilometers an hour, and the massive deceleration forces would rip the planet apart—”
I raise a caution-flag eyebrow and he refocuses on the topic. “I couldn’t see how a life without you could be possible. Losing you was cataclysmic.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“I hate to bring this up now, but you were wrong.”
Um, yeah, so far my speech was a lot better than his. “Excuse me?”
“Ignorance sucks, because as long as you kept me in the dark, I didn’t
know you. And that’s not bliss.” He gets down (or up, really) on one knee on our cement ledge and takes both my hands in one of his. “Talia, obviously, there’s a lot we have to figure out, but I think that’s what marriage is about. And I would love to spend the rest of forever getting to know you. Or trying to understand you.”
I laugh a little, and the tears make a comeback. Yes, a couple tears spill over.
“You are the most amazing person I’ve ever known. You’re a fighter, and you’re an awesome woman, and oh yeah, you saved my life more than once tonight, even after what I put you through.”
“Ditto.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that you’re so beautiful I can hardly believe it.”
Normally I’m the one who can hardly believe it when he says that, and I brace for the little catch in my heart, the mental voice that always whispers in the doubts.
But it doesn’t come. Because now I do believe him.
He opens the box, but please excuse me if my focus isn’t on the ring right now. “Talia Rosalie Reynolds—” Danny bows his head closer to whisper, “What’s your job title again?”
“Operations officer.”
He straightens and starts over, squeezing my hands a little tighter. “Talia Rosalie Reynolds—” He leans in to add my job title — “CIA operations officer, will you marry me?”
Like I told Danny, I speak four languages, but none of them contain a word emphatic enough for my answer. So I settle for “Yes!”
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SPY FOR A SPY
DURHAM CREST BOOKS
Cover design by Steven Novak
© 2013 Jordan McCollum
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First printing, 2013
For Ben and Diana, my parents,
who appear nowhere in these pages,
other than the acknowledgments where they belong.
Thank you.
I don’t do lace. Or ruffles. Or frills. In fact, I don’t do tulle, taffeta, satin, sequins, bows, beads, flowers or froof.
Then again, until a month ago, I didn’t do marriage, either.
So I was wrong on one count. But the other things? I’m less than excited to spend my lunch break twirling for my sort-of friends in any of the above and acting like I love every second. Of course, none of the girls from church know I’m a spy.
I have another hour before I face them and the long hard look in the mirror — and first, I kinda have to finish that spy gig. With a breath to cool my climbing heart rate, I adjust the headset of my classified listening device. No noises from the next apartment, even over the sound of my partner’s silenced drill (not loud) and the dress shopping anxieties still ringing through my brain (loud). If our “luck” holds, Justin and I will finish setting up surveillance on our new Russian friends in plenty of time for my stupid lunch date.
“You’re cute when you’re focused, Talia.” Justin pauses his drilling and waits until I meet his eyes before he winks.
“Wish I could say the same, but I’ve never seen you focused. Or cute.”
He grimaces and turns back to his silent drilling. “Is that acerbic wit how you finally landed a man?”
I scoff. “Yeah, you’re the expert on man-catching.” Justin’s an incurable flirt (and straight), but he’s not interested in me. He just thinks it’s hilarious to make me squirm since I got engaged five weeks ago.
Or maybe Justin’s about-face has more to do with the fact I always worked more closely with someone else who saw himself as a charmer. Elliott made a great buffer until he and Will transferred to the embassy a month ago. But I can handle Justin. With a pointed glance at my listening device, I remind him we’ve got work to do. Yeah, high tech gadgets really are part of a spy’s repertoire, though I can’t say much about this one unless I want to risk a gruesome fate at the hands of DS&T, our version of Bond’s Q. So let’s leave it at a twenty-first century glass against the wall.
The neighbors’ apartment is quiet. Maybe too quiet, since somebody’s supposed to be home. If not, our job’s easier: we can place this contact mic and get out of here that much faster.
Faster would be good, even if it means I’ll still make my dreaded dress shopping lunch date. I should’ve told them I had plans with my boyf — fiancé.
Something stirs in the next apartment. My lungs trap my breath. A chair scraping on the floor? I hold up a hand, and Justin backs off with the drill.
Footsteps. So one person’s at home, at least. Pity there aren’t more. If they discussed their intelligence connections, we could figure out if this bug is worth the time and risk.
No such luck. The footsteps fade. Guess we’ll have to stick to assessing and infiltrating this potential sleeper cell the hard way. I nod for Justin to go back to work.
“Do anything fun over the weekend?” he asks. I don’t need the distraction when my most important job is, you know, listening, but I’ll take the bait.
“I’m getting married in a month, and I’ve got exactly nothing done. I don’t have time for fun.” Because wedding planning definitely isn’t that.
“We’re through,” Justin announces. I almost tease that we were never a “we” to begin with until my brain catches up to his subject jump: the drill. We’re through the sheetrock.
Justin sets his tools on the table and digs into our kit again, this time coming up with a minivac. (DS&T does DustBusters.) He cleans up the drywall dust, a telltale sign your walls have some sort of bug.
The exterminator won’t go after these. I flip open the case for our contact mic, a disc the size of a dime. Applied to the neighbors’ sheetrock, the mic transmits sound waves from their apartment to our receivers. Better than a fly on the wall. (We have those, too.)
I give him the mic. Justin pulls out the right tool for placing it through the hole — okay, it’s basically a glorified stick — and I refocus on the sounds of silence.
A knock echoes through the apartment. I flinch and jerk to look at Justin. I could be wrong, but that sounded like it was —
The knock comes again. Justin turns wide eyes on me. Yep. Our door. My heart hits the dirt since the rest of me doesn’t dare move. “You order pizza?” I murmur.
“Yeah, I always have takeout delivered to places I officially never was.”
I’m guessing my expression matches his, like we’ve both been caught with our hands in the international cookie jar. In reality, mine is still frozen on the listening device; the contact mic and stick in Justin’s hands hang in mid-air. Like whoever’s at the door can hear us move.
“Vy tam,” calls the man in the hall. My stomach crawls down an inch. The language isn’t surprising, given we’re in the heart of Ottawa’s Russian enclave, but his inflection is odd. I can’t quite interpret his meaning.
“Translation?” Justin whispers.
Tricky. The pitch pattern is supposed to make the difference, and he didn’t use one I recognize. “It’s either ‘Are you there?’ or ‘You’re there.’”
Either way, he’
s talking to us.
Of course, my last Russian mission might be why my blood pressure’s somewhere in the stratosphere. That op was an anomaly. There’s no way things can go that bad again. Right?
“Answer him.” Justin holds out a hand for my listening device.
“And say what? Zdes' nikto krome nas kury? Nobody here but us chickens?” I translate before he can ask. “Don’t mind us, we’re just tapping the neighbors?”
“How about ‘we gave at the office’?”
Another knock. This dude isn’t giving up.
Justin throws me the toolkit with my disguise. I twist up my long hair and tuck my dark bangs under a blond wig. Thick glasses with ’80s plastic frames complete the light disguise. Wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny, but I’m hoping to keep this guy at a distance.
I call through the door. “Kto tam?”
“Domovladelez.”
Great. Landlord. I mouth that to Justin. He stuffs our tools back into our kit, a little rougher than I’d like with that sensitive contact mic, and kicks the bag under the kitchen table.
We rented the furnished apartment earlier this week, though obviously no moving trucks have been by. The landlord has to have noticed. I crack the door and peer out. The dude on the other side is short, stout and very Russian.
Cold lightning lances through me, and I grip the doorknob tighter. For a split second, I’m back in the locks of the Rideau Canal, a prisoner facing her captor.
Logic takes over. That captor’s in custody. His intel led us here, but he’s not the man in front of me. For one thing, the landlord’s walking free. For another, he’s walking at all. One deep breath and my pulse is under control. “Da?”
Spy Another Day Box Set: Three full-length novels: I, Spy; Spy for a Spy; and Tomorrow We Spy (Spy Another Day clean romantic suspense trilogy) Page 27
