Kept Secrets

by Traci Hunter Abramson

“With any luck, by the time I get there, we’ll have enough money saved to start looking for something bigger.”

  “I was actually wondering if we might want to see if we could transfer to somewhere a little less crowded.”

  “I gather you aren’t loving New York so far.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like New York. I just miss having some space.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Are you going to be working here when you get back stateside?”

  “That was what I was told, but I might be able to request a change. Why? Where would you want to live?”

  “I was doing some research last night. I thought Northern Virginia might be a nice area. If I transfer, that’s where my office would be, and it’s not far from Washington, DC.”

  Devin considered her suggestion. In truth, if he could get reassigned to the DC area, they could stay there indefinitely since he would be so close to CIA headquarters. “I’ll ask my boss about it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They chatted a few more minutes about their jobs and the novelty of being in new cities on opposite sides of the world. When he finally signed off so he could leave for work, he wondered how to best approach the topic of a transfer to DC. After all, since arriving in Hong Kong, he had barely spoken to anyone within the agency.

  He pocketed his phone and slid a few files into his briefcase. After he snapped it shut, he headed for the door. Time to pretend he wasn’t a spy while wishing he could go back to being the husband Grace wanted him to be.

  * * *

  It couldn’t be right. She stared down at the little plus sign glaring back at her. Positive. Positively pregnant.

  Her heart fluttered with emotions, a flood of thoughts rushing through her mind. She was having a baby. Devin’s baby. Fear and uncertainty slowly gave way to anticipation.

  Our baby.

  What would Devin think? They hadn’t really talked about starting a family. She’d expected they would have children, but when and how many hadn’t entered the conversation. Both of them had been so consumed with finding ways to spend time together while finishing their degrees that those life decisions had been put aside until their life together really began.

  Ideas of how she could share the news with her husband brought a smile to her face. A pair of baby booties as a gift when she saw him in London in a few weeks? Or maybe an ultrasound picture in a card? Surely she could get in to see a doctor before her trip.

  The real question was whether she would be able to stand keeping this news to herself for so long. She and Devin still spoke nearly every day. Six o’clock every night, which equated to seven o’clock in the morning for him.

  She had gotten into the habit of waiting for his call at work or in various restaurants near the subway station before going home for fear she would miss their daily connection. Now she understood why the smell of bacon and coffee had left her feeling queasy the past few days.

  Lost in her thoughts, she startled when the alarm on her cell phone went off, a reminder that she needed to walk out the door in ten minutes.

  She finished getting dressed and crossed to the kitchen, rummaging through one of the narrow kitchen cabinets until she found some crackers. She put them in a plastic sandwich bag and dropped them into her purse.

  Another glance at her phone revealed her tardiness, and she hurried toward the stairs. Jogging down four flights left her breathless, but the effort paid off, and she managed to make it onto the subway platform mere seconds before her train arrived.

  All the seats were occupied, and she grabbed on to the bar beside her to keep her balance when the train began its forward motion.

  A baby, she thought to herself again. Looking around the crowded train, she couldn’t help but contrast it with where she had come from. The open spaces of Arizona and Colorado seemed a distant memory.

  The subway stopped, and another wave of people poured on. Someone jostled her with no words of apology or concern. A seed of doubt crept into her mind. Was New York City really where she wanted to raise a child? And would Washington, DC, be any better?

  * * *

  Devin had eaten dinner out every night for three weeks straight. Restaurants, pubs, even an evening at a comedy club. The venue changed from day to day, but he now understood why the agency had wanted someone single. The people he worked with at Revival Financial worked hard all day and socialized well into the night.

  Making a connection with Fai Meng had taken some time. He worked on a different floor from Devin, and Devin hadn’t wanted to appear as though he was seeking out a friendship. Instead he had watched and observed, the way Chee had instructed him. Once he had identified whom Fai socialized with, Devin had casually started expanding his network of associations to include those mutual acquaintances. Last night his patience had finally paid off, and he had ended up at dinner with Fai and three of his friends.

  The wiry man carried an air of suspicion with him, and Devin couldn’t help but wonder why the agency had keyed in on him. He didn’t look like someone who would be easy to convince to help feed information to a foreign government.

  Two of his dining companions were women, and Devin found himself trying to put up invisible walls when Meilin, the one seated closest to him, started flirting. The image of Elyse sitting beside him at the comedy club in Las Vegas sprang to mind. Then, as now, the only woman he was interested in beyond a casual conversation was Grace.

  He thought of his daily conversations with her. Something about her seemed different, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. Maybe it was the struggle of being apart for so long. Since marrying, they had never gone this long without seeing each other.

  Meilin leaned a little closer, and Devin knew he had to make a choice. Though he doubted his CIA superiors would be pleased with his decision, he looked at his watch and pushed away from the table.

  Speaking in Cantonese, he said, “I’d better get going. I have some research to do on the London market before work tomorrow. I’ll see you later.”

  When Devin stepped back from the table, he thought he saw a flash of surprise on Fai’s face. Or was it annoyance? With him, it was hard to tell. Hoping he hadn’t damaged their fragile relationship, he headed for the door and the crowded sidewalks beyond.

  Chapter 16

  Grace sat in the examination room, ultrasound equipment parked to her right and a chart displaying the growth of a fetus hanging to her left.

  The door opened, and a woman in her midthirties entered, her black hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and Grace guessed her to be only about five foot two.

  “Mrs. Shanahan, I’m Dr. Benson.” She extended her hand.

  “Nice to meet you.” Grace waited for the news, finding that she was now more worried to find out she wasn’t pregnant than to receive the confirmation that she was. “Did the blood test results come back?”

  “They did. You are most definitely pregnant.” Dr. Benson motioned to the machine. “Go ahead and lie back on the table. I’m going to do an ultrasound so we’ll have some initial measurements, and we’ll be able to give you a more accurate due date.”

  Grace did as she was asked, the doctor chatting with her about Grace’s new career, her living situation, and how she was adjusting to life in New York.

  As they talked, Grace stared at the monitor, black, white, and gray images shifting on the screen as the doctor began the ultrasound. Grace didn’t know how the woman could identify anything based on what she saw. She also didn’t notice the silence that had come over the room until Dr. Benson spoke again.

  “You said your husband is working overseas?”

  “That’s right.”

  Something in the doctor’s demeanor had changed, and fear lodged inside Grace. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine,” Dr. Benson assured her. “How long is your husband expected to be gone?”

  “About four and a half more months.”

  “So he’ll be back before you deliver.”
<
br />   Grace nodded.

  “That’s good. You’ll want him to be here when you get your Christmas present.”

  “Christmas present?” Grace asked.

  “Your due date is December 23, but I imagine you’ll deliver earlier than that.” She motioned to the monitor, using the cursor as a pointer. “Right here is baby A’s heartbeat.”

  Grace stared at the rapid movement on the screen with a sense of awe.

  Dr. Benson moved the cursor to the left. “And this is baby B’s heartbeat.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Twins?”

  “Twins.”

  “Are you sure?” Grace tried to make out the two little heartbeats, but without the doctor pointing them out, everything still looked like a blur.

  “I’m sure.” She made several clicks and measured two gray blobs. She then hit the print button and, a moment later, handed Grace a narrow strip of five attached photos. Thankfully, each one was labeled so Grace could sort of make out what she was looking at.

  “Keep in mind that twins are prone to come early. Ideally we would like you to make it to December 2, but there are things we can do to make sure the babies’ lungs develop in the event that they come prematurely.” Dr. Benson continued. “While we will do everything we can to make sure you make it to thirty-seven weeks, I strongly recommend you prepare for their arrival much earlier.”

  “What about travel? I was planning to meet my husband in London in a couple weeks.”

  “You should be fine with that. I would recommend taking a day off work when you get home to give yourself some recovery time though.” She pulled out a lab-request form and filled it out. “I want you to start taking prenatal vitamins every day, and you’ll need to go to the lab for blood work.”

  The doctor went on to explain some of the possible complications and instructed her on diet, exercise, and the frequency of her checkups.

  By the time Grace left the office, her head was spinning. Excited and terrified at the prospect of having two babies instead of one, she wondered how Devin was going to take the news.

  * * *

  Devin walked into his apartment and closed the door behind him. He was two steps inside before he realized he wasn’t alone. His heartbeat quickened, and his head whipped around until he found the intruder.

  “Chee. What are you doing in here?” He looked around nervously.

  “What is this?” Chee held up a computer printout.

  “I don’t know. What is it?”

  “Airline reservations for London in two weeks. I never heard about you going to London.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with work. I promised Grace I would meet her there for a long weekend. I already put in for a couple days off work.”

  “Devin, you can’t go.”

  Nothing would have hit him harder. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You can’t go flying around the world meeting up with some woman.”

  “She isn’t ‘some woman.’ She’s my wife.”

  “You aren’t married, remember? Not while you’re living here.”

  Devin set his jaw. “Let’s not forget that I didn’t ask for this. I wasn’t told I was being groomed for this job until I had already been married for three months.”

  “But you didn’t tell the agency you were getting married until it was too late.”

  Devin recognized the truth of the statement, but the other man’s posture told him something he hadn’t considered before. “We both know if I had asked the agency about getting married, they would have denied my request. I’m supposed to be fighting for freedom, not sacrificing all of my own.”

  “You can’t go to London,” Chee repeated. He held out his other hand. In it rested a pea-sized listening device.

  “Is that . . . ?” His voice trailed off.

  Chee nodded. “I deactivated it when I came in.”

  “How did you find it? And who put it here?”

  “I do a sweep of your apartment every week. I’m not sure who put it here. I’ll have headquarters run a search of the building’s security footage to see if we can identify who could have come up here. Unfortunately, the security cameras are only on the main level.”

  The ramifications of the device being found in his apartment struck a chord of fear and apprehension. “If this is here, then I’ve been compromised.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Someone bugged my apartment.” Devin motioned toward the device. “That isn’t something people do if they aren’t suspicious.”

  “It’s possible they suspect something, but so far, everything you’ve been feeding us has been from your observations or from files you were granted access to. More likely, they see you as someone they might cultivate as an asset of their own.”

  “What?” Devin couldn’t be hearing him right. “You think some intelligence agency wants me to be a spy? If they don’t know who I really work for, I have nothing to offer.”

  “Unless they’re going to convince you to apply for the CIA. Like I said, your language skills make you a valuable asset. You also fit the profile. Young, ambitious, no strong family ties.”

  “Is that why the CIA recruited me?”

  “You applied for the internship, remember?” Chee said. “Your language skills and aptitude tests are why you were hired.”

  Devin thought over the last few days, replaying his conversations with Grace, all of them here in his apartment. “They must know about Grace.”

  “What?”

  “I talk to her every morning, sitting right there at my kitchen table. We FaceTime, so whoever planted this would be able to hear our entire conversation.”

  “Her phone is encrypted, remember? Even if someone did hear the conversation, they can’t find her.” Chee spoke the words as though trying to convince himself as much as Devin. “What do you talk about? Did you say anything about your work here or give her information that might compromise you?”

  “Not me.” His heart sank. “But she mentioned her apartment in New York and how she thought she might want to move somewhere else so we could have more space. She brought it up again a couple days ago.”

  “Did either of you mention your marriage?”

  “I don’t think so. At least not in the last couple weeks.”

  “New York is a big city. No one is going to be able to find Grace without knowing her last name, and she hasn’t lived there long enough to be locatable anyway.”

  What he said made sense, but that didn’t chase away the sick feeling in Devin’s stomach. “What do I do now?”

  “The same thing you do every day. I’m going to reactivate the listening device before I leave. You’ll open the door and act as though you are receiving a delivery so the sound of the door doesn’t sound out of place.”

  “Why would you want someone to be able to spy on me?”

  “Because someone who is CIA would be able to find this. Someone who isn’t would never know it was here,” Chee said. “Also, from now on, when you speak to Grace, make sure you call her on the phone instead of FaceTiming her. That will allow you to control what is overheard.”

  “Won’t whoever is listening notice the change?”

  “Probably. When you talk to Grace, make a point of telling her that you’re having trouble with your phone and you couldn’t get FaceTime to work.”

  “I’ll cancel my trip, but I want someone to make sure Grace is safe.”

  “I’ll take care of it, but the best way to keep her safe is to make the people listening think she’s no longer in your life.”

  “You want me to break up with my wife?”

  “Make it sound like you’re breaking up with her. Tell her a lie about why you can’t come to London. That will set the tone for an upcoming split. We’ll follow that with a fake conversation of you breaking up with her.”

  “So I need to find somewhere else to go when I call her,” Devin said, seeing where Chee was going with his plan.

  “Exactly. I’ll look
into some locations that could work. In the meantime, you need to sound like you’re distancing yourself from Grace.”

  Devin hated the idea, but it was a much better alternative to putting her in danger. “I understand.”

  Chee placed the listening device on the back edge of the mirror that hung on the living room wall. After activating the device, he made his way quietly to the front door and motioned for Devin to follow.

  As they had agreed, Chee knocked on the inside of the door. Devin then opened it and pretended to receive a delivery. As soon as Devin was alone, he looked around his apartment, a sense of violation coming over him. Who had been here? And why did they care what happened within these walls?

  Chapter 17

  Grace carefully placed two pairs of white booties in a gift box, setting one of the ultrasound photos on top before folding the tissue paper over it and closing the lid. She could already imagine watching Devin open it, seeing that moment when his confusion gave way to understanding. In the scenario she had conjured up in her mind, he always went from stunned to excited in a heartbeat. She hoped reality mirrored her dreams.

  Her phone rang, and she drew a steadying breath. She knew it would take all her willpower to keep from telling him everything. Keeping her pregnancy a secret over the past few weeks had been hard enough, but twins? She felt like she might burst with excitement.

  She grabbed her phone, surprised to see him making a regular phone call instead of choosing to FaceTime with her. “Hey, there. How are you?”

  “Actually, I’ve had better days.”

  “What’s wrong? You sound exhausted.”

  “Grace, I’m so sorry, but I’m not going to be able to meet you in London.”

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but that was not it. “You can’t be serious. We’ve been looking forward to this for weeks.”

  “I know. I got called into my boss’s office yesterday and found out I have a big presentation we have to prep for. They aren’t approving any leave for at least a few weeks.”

  “We haven’t seen each other for over two months.” If he couldn’t get away, maybe they could change their plans and still make things work. “What if I come to you? If I can get a couple extra days off, I can come to Hong Kong instead of London.”