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

  I wait for any opportunity to ditch Nadia and talk to Danny or vice versa, but she controls the grand tour masterfully. When we’ve seen the aviary, we circle back to the large fountain near the entrance. After all our stops in here, I’m sure we’re not being tailed — though we are being ferried around by an FSB officer’s girlfriend — but I can’t shake the feeling. Of course we’re being watched.

  We reach the fountain and Nadia launches into another history lesson. I’m keeping up with her stories when someone veers a step too close to me. With Danny on my left, I don’t have time to move. I brace myself for the bump.

  Instead, the stranger maneuvers past me, barely brushing my coat, touching my hand. But not just touching it — something drops into my fingers with the quietest of clinks.

  I close my fist around a key chain, keep my features still and do not search for whoever executed that brush pass. Nadia hasn’t missed a beat, so I don’t either, slipping the key in my pocket when she isn’t looking.

  In a lull in Nadia’s narration, Danny’s hand lands on the small of my back, cracking my concentration. He leans in to whisper again. “Why are we still excited about the communists winning this war?”

  I signal for him to hush. That is not a topic of discussion, especially not for Americans. “I can’t explain why, but Lenin is still revered as a hero.”

  He keeps his voice down. “We’re allowed to talk about Lenin but not communism?’

  “Pretty much.” I move even closer. “Stalin is He Who Shall Not Be Named.”

  “Russia’s history is Harry Potter?” Danny smiles at his joke.

  I always call Danny’s smiles Talia-melting, and this one is that and more. I manage to smile back, but mine holds a sadder note.

  No. I am Lori. I will compartmentalize this. I will not flirt with my husband — and what we’re doing now could look like any interpreter joking around with a client. Right?

  Nadia brushes past us again, and I move away from Danny. My waist turns cold where his warm hand was, as if I could feel his touch through my coat.

  When I catch up to her, Nadia casts me a sideways glance. “If you’re not careful,” she intones in Russian, “someone will get hurt. Badly.”

  I don’t answer, just keep my head down and match Nadia’s speed to the car.

  She may be Durochka Dinochka, but she’s also dating her boss. How hard would it be for her to assume I’m dating mine? And how dangerous?

  Nadia returns us to Borya’s office — where he isn’t. We’re a little later than planned, so he should be finished with Tsurenko. Where could Borya be? Danny cranes his neck to check the two halls that converge on the corner office. “Is he still in his meeting?”

  “I’ll find him.” Nadia marches off for the elevators again.

  I hate to risk another entry into his office, but if we don’t look for those plans, our mission will definitely fail. This is an opportunity gift wrapped in a whole lot of office paper. I scan the hallways twice more before I slip the travel lock pick set from my waistband.

  I’m not great with picking locks, but this one offers all of five seconds’ resistance. It’s open before Danny appears at my shoulder to ask, “What are you doing?”

  I give him an eye. “My job.”

  “Don’t make this about him.”

  I stand there, gripping the knob for a very long second. What is he asking me to do — or not do? “Why? Because he’s nice?”

  “I get that’s why you don’t like him, but in the real world, being nice is actually a positive thing.”

  My heart sinks like a star-crossed Soviet submarine. He still doesn’t believe me. My own —

  I can’t afford emotion. I don’t have time. They’ll be back any minute. “Fine,” I tell Danny. “You be lookout.” I turn the handle and step into Borya’s dim office.

  With Danny on my heels. “He isn’t the only person working here. The odds against this are astronomical.”

  “Stay there.” I point back at the door.

  “Does it say ‘Fido’ on my forehead?”

  I trip midstep — but stay on topical target. “Are you trying to stop me?”

  He silently invites me to go right ahead with a gesture at the cardboard tubes in front of the desk.

  Already looked there. I snap the next USB drive into my copier and start where I left off in the piles along the wall.

  “What are you hoping—?”

  I whip around to unleash a glare at him, indicating my ears, and then the walls.

  “If what you think is true,” Danny says, very carefully guarding his words, “why would he do that to himself?”

  I choke back a frustrated snort and focus on the stack of still more requisitions.

  “Could you be logical for one minute?”

  “Sorry I’m not Dr. Spock.” I move on to the next pile, the seconds until Borya gets back beating through my brain louder than my pulse.

  “Mr. Spock. Dr. Spock is the baby expert.”

  I glower at Danny’s correction and move on to the desk — and the real issue. “Whose side are you on?” I turn back to the desk and start on the top papers. Personnel lists.

  Danny rounds the desk to stand opposite me, pushing the chair out of the way. He leans down to my line of sight. “How about sanity’s?”

  “You want to do the sane thing?” I point back at the door to tell him to stand lookout. When he doesn’t move, I plant my hands on those personnel lists, and three different stacks slide in three different directions. Danny and I both shift into damage control mode, him ducking to catch two piles, while I pin down the one avalanching toward me. One of Danny’s piles hits the mouse, waking up the computer. I crane my neck to see the desktop appear. Still logged in? He can’t have gotten far, and now we’ve wrecked his office.

  I shove the papers into place. Then I hear familiar laughter echo in the hall. Borya?

  I yank the USB drive free of the copier and dash to the door, but I can only see down one hallway. I barely dare to venture far enough to see around the corner — Borya’s five feet away. He spots me immediately, and my ribs turn into steel girders.

  “Borislav Vyacheslavovich,” I exclaim a touch too loudly. Danny had better hear that.

  “Here you are.” Once again, mirth is practically doing a mambo in Borya’s eyes. “We were ready to search.”

  “Sorry.” I have to save Danny. I block Borya’s path to the door. “It was all my fault; I—” I cut myself off when confusion flickers across his face.

  He was kidding, probably about us getting back late from sightseeing. Good one, Talia.

  He waits for me to move aside, pulling his keys from his pocket. Danny’s pinned down without an escape. I can’t extract him. I need a cover. A distraction. “Where’s Nadia?” I ask.

  “‘Helping’ someone with paperwork, as long as she doesn’t make that worse. Let me get something and we’ll start the final negotiations.” He grins, all patience and kindness. No guile at all. He’s so genuine, he almost reminds me of Danny.

  That thought blocks out any other ideas for distraction tactics.

  Borya is not Danny. He’s not. He’s a very well trained FSB officer trying very hard to play on my American sympathies, and he’d be doing a very good job if I weren’t careful to keep my guard up. I bring my brain into a mental boxer’s stance and focus on Borya again.

  He’s eyeing the already-cracked door. “I’m certain I locked this.”

  “We found it unlocked.” I try to sound concerned. “Might want to ask around.”

  My lie does nothing to slow him. He pushes through and flips on the light. “Danny?”

  “Borya, hi, afternoon.” Danny straightens the pile on the desk one last time. “We were just looking for you.”

  That friendly smile’s gone, replaced with a hurt frown. “At my empty desk? Without the light?”

  “My fault,” I jump in. “My phone charger wasn’t working last nig
ht, and Danny was helping me find yours.”

  Borya scrutinizes me, waiting for my cover to crack. Not happening.

  He has no reason to suspect me. He sent me here alone earlier. He should still trust me. No matter how many seconds pass, I can hold this cover of damsel in telephonic distress.

  After a long minute, he nods and goes to his desk. Danny steps back to give him room. Borya fishes the charger from a top drawer and offers it to me. But as he slides the drawer closed, the tremor reactivates all the fault lines between the piles, and another landslide sets in, this time knocking the USB drives down.

  Borya swears under his breath. I’m there in a heartbeat to help him clean up. Too easy. Pick up one, switch hands to place it on the desk. Pick up another, and another, put them on the desk. Pick up two more, deposit them on the desk. He doesn’t seem to notice the one hidden in my left hand as I grab another drive and stick it on the desk with my right.

  Danny arrives in time to scoop up the last few and finagle them into the only carefully engineered (ha) configuration that keeps them all on the corner of the desk.

  “Apparently that takes a rocket scientist,” I mutter.

  Borya and Danny both reward me with wry almost-smiles. “Two,” Danny says. He turns to Borya. “Sorry for the intrusion.”

  “A misunderstanding.” He waves away our concerns. He misses a big one of mine: is there any way he doesn’t know this scenario is exactly how Fyodor stole Danny’s plans in the first place?

  Borya surveys the desk and picks up a tablet. He glances at the office chairs, still filled with paper. “Conference room again?”

  “Sure.” Danny lets Borya pass to lead the way, and I fall in behind them. But two steps in, Danny pivots back. Without a word, he presses a USB drive into my palm — and his eyes say it all. I’m doing this for you.

  I give him the smallest smile and try to communicate wordlessly, too: Thank you. I understand. I love you.

  He squeezes my hand, and I close my fingers around the USB drive. Half a dozen out of, what, twenty drives taken or copied? Not great odds, but better than nothing.

  But Danny holds my gaze a minute longer, and now I can’t read the message in his eyes. Or I don’t want to, because that certainly looks like he’s letting go of more than a USB drive, or his side in the argument three minutes ago.

  What does Danny think he’s losing here? I’m not sure I want to know.

  Borya presents a reasonably good but obviously Shcherbakov-slanted collaboration agreement, and Danny negotiates exactly what they’re willing and able to share. They both promise final offers in the morning, and we’re done at Shcherbakov for today.

  I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so good to be finishing a mission. I will not be sad the last time I see Shcherbakov in the rearview.

  But that’s tomorrow. Today, we’re back to the hotel. We get out of the cab, and Danny starts in. I don’t. He turns back to me like he’s waiting for the next body blow.

  It doesn’t hit him. It hits me: I don’t know if I can trust him alone. “I have something else to do,” I tell him. “We both do.”

  “Okay.” No hesitation or argument. Only an attitude of I can do that.

  I really, really hope so. I start for the main road and get out the key chain I received in the brush pass. The short brass key is stamped with 468. The blue silicone bracelet and plastic card on the keychain both read АРБАТ-ФИТНЕС. Arbat-Fitnes. A gym. I flip it over to find the address, number 74 1-ya liniya, and the number 3175.

  “We’re picking something up,” I tell Danny. And for once I don’t have to walk everywhere. “Let’s catch a tram.”

  A surveillance detection run, a ride on the vintage 1989 electric tram, and another SDR later, we’re safe to pick up this package. We head down the right street, down the hill, down into an industrial park. I’d worry we were going the wrong way if it weren’t for a huge billboard at the end of the street for Arbat-Fitnes. We walk through the gates and pass an office building before we find the big white gym.

  I spot a cement bench by the office building doors and gesture to the newspaper abandoned there.

  “Is that our package?” Danny asks

  “That’s where you’ll wait.”

  He shoots me a seriously? look. Huh? He’s gone with traipsing through a park, riding a tram in silence, picking up new hats, and our stops at a drug store, a convenience store, a pharmacy, a corner kiosk, even a karaoke bar. All I’m asking him to do is sit, and now he balks?

  He shakes his head and marches to the bench. Could be worse; at least I’m not towing him after me like toddler. I march into the gym. To my left, a gray tiled wall bears the gym’s name in carved block Cyrillic above black leather couches. To my right stands the registration red granite counter with cubbyholes behind it. I get close enough to peek inside. Numbered. Half of them hold the same blue rubber bracelets as the one in my hand.

  And the rest of the bracelets are red.

  The pieces snap into place a second before the admin turns to me. The bracelets must be color coded to the men’s and women’s locker rooms. I read the admin’s nametag. She’s Yekaterina, but I’m more interested in the tag itself: logo, job title, name; black ink, white paper, plastic holder on a lanyard. Easy to fake.

  Yekaterina’s waiting for me, pleasant and patient. Now I just need a plausible reason to come here and leave. “How late are you open today?” I ask.

  “Do dvadtsat′dva.” Until twenty-two. (Ten PM.)

  Not that it matters to me. I beat a retreat out. When I reach Danny, he lowers his newspaper. “Done?”

  “Does the hotel have a business center? I need a computer. And a printer.” Though if I’m careful I could make it by hand.

  “Dunno, what for?”

  I glance around; we’re alone. Still, I step closer and hold up the blue bracelet. “A nametag. I need to get into the men’s locker room.”

  Again with the seriously? look. Danny watches me another minute, waiting for me to get . . . something. But I don’t. So he grabs the bracelet from my grasp, taking the card and the key, and strides off for the gym.

  “Wait a minute.” I hurry to keep up. “You can’t—”

  “You need in the men’s locker room.” His fixed stare silently tells me to fill in the blank.

  And he’s a man. Duh, I knew that, but I . . . have no excuse. So I rack my brain for a way to stop him. We reach the doors, and I’ve got nothing. He walks straight to the desk and gives Yekaterina the card. Will they scan it? Is there a photo to match?

  She looks at the card. I don’t dare breathe. She looks up at me, then to Danny, then hands the card back. Crap. We failed.

  Then Yekaterina welcomes him to the gym. “Spasibo,” Danny says, and he starts for the marble stairs to the locker room.

  I replay the sequence in my mind from Yekaterina’s perspective. She must think I was asking how late the gym was open for Danny’s sake.

  Good enough. I jog to keep pace with him. “You sure about this?” I murmur.

  “Think I can handle opening a locker.”

  “Without drawing suspicion.” I point at the signs marked with a man’s silhouette, signaling him to follow. We reach the end of the tiled wall, revealing a juice bar. “I’ll wait here.”

  He disappears up the stairs.

  I spend the next eternity reading the menu until I can recite it from memory. But I can’t eat with nerves gnawing at my gut. On the clock above the counter, minutes crawl past. Not biting my lip or my cheek or my fist takes all my willpower.

  How long can opening a locker take? Two minutes? We’re close to twenty.

  Something’s gone wrong. Someone could’ve been watching the locker. They could be spiriting him away to the local version of the infamous Lubyanka Square now, and I’d have no clue.

  The clock shows it’s been thirty minutes, and I’ve exhausted every trick Langley ever taught me to look calm while I’m freakign o
ut under the surface. I’m done waiting. No time to make my own nametag — maybe I can “borrow” a worker’s tag. I’m on my feet, my pulse screaming for me to run to him, when Danny comes into sight on the stairs. His coat and his suit jacket drape over one arm. He’s doing his top button, his tie hanging loose on his neck. His hair’s wet. Relief releases the tension in my back. He’s fine.

  I reach him and make sure no one’s in eavesdropping range. “What took so long?”

  “Wouldn’t it be suspicious if I came right back?” He starts on his tie.

  That should’ve occurred to me, but no, I was too obsessed with the massive error of letting him out of my sight. “Good thinking.”

  We drop off the locker key, Danny dons his coats, and I wait until we’re outside before I ask, “You get it?”

  “Yep. Tablet.” He taps his coat pocket.

  With everything we copied off Borya’s computer last night? Has to be. Now we don’t have to deliver the USB drives I cloned today to Semyon. Perfect.

  “Did you really take a shower while I was out there worrying about you?” I ask.

  Danny laughs softly. “No, I just wet my hair.”

  “Sneaky.” And that’s a compliment. I’m so thrilled to get us through this okay, I could dance all the way back. I spring for ice cream cones (available year-round in Russia; don’t ask me why you have to button up but can eat frozen foods), and then kvass at a corner kiosk (yum, yeast soda; bread-based drinks are my fave) before we stroll off the main thoroughfare.

  Four SDRs, a successful dead drop pickup and Russian treats? When things are clicking, I’m unstoppable. As soon as the elevator doors close, I catch Danny in a celebratory hug.

  “We did it,” I whisper.

  “I love you too.” He pulls back enough to look at me, and I can’t help the sharp little gasp at the instant connection of our gazes. A wave of pure adrenaline hits me that has nothing to do with fulfilling our assignment as spies.