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)

by Jordan McCollum

  “Why don’t I come with you? A little backup never hurts.” His trademark cocky grin surfaces. “Might even be able to give you some pointers. You know, as payback.”

  I shoot him a death look. “Samir doesn’t know I’m CIA yet. You’ll freak him out.”

  His eyebrow inches skyward, a silent dare. I’ll follow you, it says.

  I mimic the gesture with an added sarcastic lip purse. You can try.

  Before he can read too much into that challenge, I push forward — and remember the stinging words he used to rile me up yesterday. “Maybe you’ve been in DC too long.”

  Brand bristles. I hold back my smile and continue. “But here in the field, developing agents takes time. Not a whole lot of foreign nationals traipse into Keeler Tate & Associates volunteering to spy for the US. Convincing someone who hasn’t even thought of betraying his family or his country —”

  “Is he legal?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Canadian immigration policy is one thing that’s not covered in our traces, and CSIS wouldn’t look too kindly on American officers recruiting agents on their turf (even if they’re agents with more American interests at heart). They’d probably want to swoop in and snap him up. They’d share the intel, but I still feel better handling Samir ourselves.

  Myself.

  “You need to find out his immigration status.” Brand surveys me across his desk, like he’s the king of the Company, and his word is law. “If he’s illegal, you can use that as leverage. Or we can talk to Citizenship and Immigration, maybe have them pull him in —”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Everyone knows blackmail isn’t an effective recruitment method. How long before the stress of spying gets to the agent, and deportation becomes an acceptable risk? Then we’re out of ammo.”

  “So what have you got? A relationship built on mutual trust and understanding?” The scorn in his voice makes his point of view clear, though those two characteristics are actually important in a long term agent-officer relationship.

  Enough — no, too much. I stand. “I’m not used to being micromanaged.”

  “Who’s micromanaging?”

  I fold my arms. “Seriously?”

  “Talia, Talia.” He stands and moseys around his desk to regard me with contempt. “I see what’s going on. Don’t you think you’re being a little oversensitive?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Brand pats my shoulders. I jerk out of reach. He presses on anyway. “I know things between us didn’t end on the best note.”

  Does he not know that people called me “Mormon ice princess” to my face?

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t work together now. Like adults.”

  I turn for the door. “The adults I work with give me the space I need to do my job.” And they don’t alienate me from all my friends or let a personal relationship screw up an entire team.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re blowing this out of proportion. I was only offering to help.”

  I whirl back on him, only unclenching my teeth to retort, “‘Help’ means asking what I want you to do for support, not stepping on my agents’ toes.”

  Brand moves in. I can’t give up ground to him, even if it means letting him get close enough for me to smell his woodsy cologne. Never did like that scent.

  “I don’t know how Will did things,” he says, his voice low. “But I know this: it doesn’t matter now. Will isn’t here, and I am — for a reason. Are you?”

  I shoot him a look of you’re deliberately being obtuse.

  “Then prove it.”

  “I will.” I lift my chin and meet his cold blue eyes. “By doing this the right way.”

  “Don’t let our past cloud your judgment on this case.”

  That’s it. “Don’t forget, I’m not the one who resorted to a two-year-old’s temper tantrum tactic when he didn’t get what he wanted.”

  “Apparently, you’re also not the one who’s over it.”

  My annoyance level skyrockets, and my cheeks tingle. I want to thrust my engagement ring in his face and shout, This is how over you I am.

  I’m not the two-year-old. I won’t sink to his level. And no way am I letting him get anywhere near Danny.

  I grab the knob and fling the door open. I manage to neither run nor slink back to my desk. Even if I can feel his gaze pawing at my back.

  I lock on my screen, though I can’t read the traces Elliott sent. All I can see is Brand’s condescending smirk and I’m-so-not-laughing-with-you eyes. All I can hear is my short, huffing breaths. All I can think about are Brand’s words, echoing. Hitting too close to home.

  Am I over him? Yes. Of course. Within days — hours — I questioned what I ever saw in him, why I didn’t immediately toss him on the “yeah, right” pile.

  Am I over what he did to me? What he put me through personally and at the office?

  That’s not such an easy question to answer. He destroyed the team I’d grown close to, convincing all my friends that I was the bad guy because I said no. It sucks to have someone reject you over a lie. It’s worse when it’s the truth.

  With a lie, at least you have that little security blanket to cling to: they wouldn’t hate me if only they’d believe the truth. When that truth is exactly why they hate you, you know, once and for all, that it’s really you they hate.

  He turned every single friend and coworker against me.

  The old wound’s still there, grating with every heartbeat. I spent months building up a reputation and a résumé inside the Agency, and a few weeks with a guy I knew I shouldn’t have dated nearly ruined everything.

  Nearly ruined a lot more than my job.

  So maybe I’m a little bitter when it comes to him. But could that affect my judgment on my case? Could Brand actually . . . be right?

  I try to shake off the thought. Even that comes out more as a shudder. I know what I’m doing with my case, with my agent. Don’t I?

  After Brand’s I’ll-follow-you eyebrow this afternoon, my surveillance detection run is longer than normal. I see no sign of him at BeaverTails (a great dinner twice a week—maybe three times), or the gas station or grocery store. My SDR’s almost over when a too-familiar five o’clock shadow at the dry cleaner spikes my blood pressure.

  I might be late for my meeting.

  Brand knows I’m seeing an asset, so I can’t bore him with more errands like I would another tail. I’m going to have to lose him, just like I told him I would. I could run to my car and peel out, but that’s an amateur mistake. If I leave before him, I’ll miss my best opportunity to confirm what he’s driving. Miss that little detail, and I can’t be sure if he’s still pursuing me.

  I slip into my seat and pretend to enter the charge in my check register. (Does anyone do that?) Behind my sunglasses, my gaze is glued to the guy who thinks he can pull off a fedora.

  Okay, fine, he does make it work. All the more reason to hate him.

  He moseys down a different row of cars. Great. I won’t be able to find him without baiting him into tracking me. My pulse rate starts up with my engine. I leave my spot, barely taking my eyes off Brand.

  He gets in a goofy-looking white Toyota hatchback. I fix my gaze straight ahead while I cruise down his aisle, definitely slow enough that he can see me. The Toyota pulls out behind me. Too close. He won’t want to stay that close for long, or I’d notice him. (Too late.)

  I reach the parking lot exit, a traffic light. Most people are relieved to find a traffic light when they need to make a left across six lanes of traffic. But I’m wishing for a stop sign, so I could go in the first break in the cars, timing it so Brand can’t stalk me.

  No such luck today. I’m first in line when the light changes to green. The five cars behind me would surely notice if I forced them to wait. I make my left turn, one eye on the rearview.

  The white Toyota falls back a couple car lengths, letting one or two others pass him. If he thinks that’s enough to hide from me, he doesn’t know me at all.


  I take the first left, at another stoplight, and end up in the middle of some boxy ’70s townhouses (the Finnish word for them pops into my mind: rivitalot). My heart drops an inch. Residential areas might seem like a great way to lose a tail, but you’re much more likely to encounter pedestrians, speed traps, dead ends — or just plain get lost.

  Only one car follows me before Brand. The main road through the complex leads past the townhouses and a couple high-rise apartments. That gray car, the only barrier between me and Brand, pulls onto a side street before the road comes to an end at a T-intersection. I think a right would take us back to the dry cleaner, so I head left once again. Within a minute, the newer ’90s townhomes give way to 2000s townhomes, and then another traffic artery.

  Brand’s still behind me. This time, left would take me back to the dry cleaner, so I go right, cutting in front of another car close enough even a Canadian would honk.

  The road’s familiar, though not enough that I know the speed limit. I push my Company Camry as hard as I can in post-rush hour traffic. Still, the white Toyota looms in my rearview like a comical ghost. My foot holds down the accelerator, but it’s my adrenaline system revving.

  Brand isn’t going to hurt me — I think — but if I can’t shake him, things will get really uncomfortable. And if I keep Samir waiting too long, we won’t meet tonight at all.

  Finally, the trees lining the street thin out and we hit more commercial developments. I scan the landmarks. Baseball field? Right. Salvation Army Citadel? A Mormon and a Muslim walk into the Salvation Army? Setup for a bad joke. Rec centre? We have a winner.

  Two minutes later, I’m parked and striding into the rec centre, fake gym bag in tow. The rec centre looks like a high school in teal and royal blue. I’ll need to get past the front desk, but as long as it’s a City of Ottawa facility, I’ve got a membership pass.

  A pass that Keeler Tate paid for. (Gyms can be great places to meet assets.) Has Brand already set up his membership? My stomach ties itself in three kinds of knots.

  I’ll find out. Fortunately, everything here is clearly labeled, and I march up to the OFFICE/BUREAU like I’ve been here a million times. They scan my card and I’m down the hall marked DRESSING ROOMS/VESTIAIRES when I notice the doors to the hockey rinks.

  My knotted stomach dives. Everyone knows how Pakistanis love their ice skating, right?

  I turn into the women’s changing room. In my peripheral vision, I see Brand on approach to the office. I’m in a changing stall before I realize I’m panting.

  If he believes I’m here to meet Samir, Brand will surely pay whatever it costs to get in and track me down. But if he hasn’t fallen for the diversion, he’ll just wait for me to come out.

  Then he’ll be waiting a long time. I grab Justin’s curly wig from Monday and tuck my hair under it, throwing on a slouchy tuque to help my disguise. The only makeup I have on hand: my usual brown eyeliner. Aggressive blending makes my cheekbones appear way more prominent. I borrow a page from my stepmother’s makeup book and use the eyeliner as lip liner and eye shadow, though a pair of blinged-out sunglasses will hide part of my makeover.

  I start out of the stall and reach the changing room exit before it hits me: my legs. My skirt isn’t all that distinguishing, but if Brand remembers one thing about me, it’s my legs.

  I examine the bank of lockers. With a glance around to make sure I’m not being watched, I slip one more thing out of my bag: a thin piece of metal designed to shim locks. It makes quick work of the nearest locker. And my luck for the afternoon holds: bad though not 100% terrible. The pants inside are three sizes too big. No way will Brand recognize me in stonewashed jeans.

  A scarf from my kit makes a good enough belt, and my eyeliner gets one more use: scrawling a note of apology to the pants’ owner, promising to return them tomorrow. One final touch, a jacket, and I could stroll past Brand without quite having a heart attack.

  When I leave the dressing room, adrenaline singing in my veins, just keeping my pants up alters my gait enough that I have no problem sweeping right past that fedora. But I don’t dare breathe till I reach the parking lot.

  White Toyota hatchback, check. Its driver? Still inside the building.

  Like I said, Brand could try to follow me. I puff out my relief and hop in my car.

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m scrubbing off my disguise in the bathroom of the Ottawa Public Library, Alta Vista branch: my final destination. I find Samir waiting in the lobby, dark skin, wavy black hair and strangely un-creepy mustache. He offers me a little smile. We’ve met enough over the last month that we’re officially becoming friends. I’m one of the only ones he has here.

  Generally, meeting with an agent is, you know, secret spy work, but Samir isn’t an agent — yet. For now, he’s helping me improve my rusty Urdu, and I’m refining his English. We head to our windowless study room. Once we’ve caught up on our small talk, we review basic Urdu food vocabulary and obscure English grammar rules. Obviously, Samir’s more help to me than I am to him.

  I try to explain (and remember) the dependent clause in one of his example questions, but when I check, Samir’s gaze is focused somewhere closer to Pakistan. Not the first time tonight I’ve caught him distracted.

  “Are you all right?” I ask in Urdu.

  Samir puffs out a breath. My scalp tingles, though I try to restrain the excitement. Could be nothing. Maybe his cat died. Maybe he’s worried about English. Maybe he hates his job.

  We’d give Fluffy the Dr. Frankenstein treatment, practice with him four hours a day, and double his income if he wanted to work for us.

  People usually want to talk. They only need an audience, and I’m the best you’ve met. Samir retreats into silence for too long. “Do you have a family?” he finally asks.

  “Sure.” I nod, my mind racing through all the ways we can get him one. Immigration help for someone in Pakistan? Tickets to visit home? Mail order bride?

  “Your family must have no problems.”

  I can’t help the snort. “Yeah, no.”

  Samir furrows his brow. “Is this a yes or a no, ‘yeah, no’?”

  “It’s a no. The ‘yeah’ part is sarcasm.” I’m not ready to leave the topic yet. “What’s bothering you about your family?”

  He takes so long to think, fiddling with an index card with “force” (“zor”) on it, that I don’t think he’ll continue. Did I push him too hard?

  At least it’s a start. I’m ready to change the subject when he speaks up. “What do you do when you hate what someone is doing, but you cannot stop him? When he is family, I mean. And you’ll always be tied to him.”

  Oh, let this be Wasti. I don’t even care if that would make Brand right about the black sheep thing. Let. Him. Mean. Wasti. “Is he hurting himself?”

  “No.” Samir’s head makes a slow side-to-side sweep. “I am afraid he will hurt others, though.” Sigh. Whisper: “Many others.”

  “And you don’t think you can stop him?”

  He drops the card and stares at his empty hands, feeble and powerless, like his emotions have drained his muscles.

  If I can give him that power — “Someone has to be able to stop him, right?”

  “Perhaps someone, but . . . someone more great than me.”

  “Greater,” I suggest gently. Playing my cover to the end.

  “Yes, greater.”

  This is an opening. I want this so badly the chorus of pitch him pitch him pitch him sings in my pulse. But wanting something too much can come back to hurt you. It makes you eager. It makes you reckless. It makes you weak.

  I’m none of the above, and tonight I refuse to be vulnerable.

  “I wish there were something I could do to help you,” I murmur, letting my eyes take on a far-off cast. “We can’t make other people’s choices for them.”

  “No.” Samir’s shoulders fall another inch. “Sometimes we cannot spare the innocent.”

  I try to swallow, but my mouth is cotton dry. The i
nnocent in the States? The innocent here? I need a date, a place, a context to pin this guy down. “Do you have a friend who might be able to reach out to your relative? Stop him?”

  Samir’s bowed head drops closer to the tabletop. “We do not share many friends.”

  “Well, if you think it’s this drastic, have you thought about talking to the police?” Like they’d know what to do.

  “The police? Why would they believe me? All they have to do is hear my accent or my name. Then he will still be making trouble, and I will be in it.”

  “You’re probably right.” I pick up the “force” card and practice my vocabulary. It’s not over — not by a long shot. Despite the siren song of his mini-confession, I know there’s a strong chance he could balk, walk away, even warn his cousin off. I don’t want to risk lives, especially not American ones. Killing any possibility of working with him by pitching him too soon might be deadlier in the long run.

  For all of us.

  Samir’s sadness seems sincere, but there’s no such thing as a human lie detector. Even Danny has to face a polygraph. Samir will, too, if he’s ready to help us. His first real intel on his cousin will be his good faith effort, and once he shares that, he’ll be in too deep to back out.

  After another dozen cards, Samir slows down on the vocabulary drills. Distracted. I wouldn’t be a friend if I didn’t at least offer to help. I use an elicitation tactic to get intel without asking, trying to make him correct me. “Your brother again?”

  “My cousin.”

  Victory. “Must be really hard knowing something bad’s coming, being so helpless.”

  “I am trapped in a bottle, and I cannot reach the cork. I can almost help, but . . .”

  My palms go clammy. “Maybe you can.”

  “I can?” A pitying smile plays across his face. “You think you can do everything, no?”

  His voice, his eyes — something isn’t right here. I have to give him time to think it over, to figure out how badly he wants this, to see how much he needs it. “I just know if I felt that hopeless, I’d listen to any suggestion. Especially if I might be able to protect innocent people.”