~~~~~~~~
“You would think that being a spy would be more exciting.” That was the thought that was most prevalent in Lia’s head during the weeks after she recruited herself for Connor’s mission. She had known that the grandiose view that works of fiction had implanted in her head in regards to the finer points of espionage wouldn’t be overly accurate, but she hadn’t expected spying to be so dull.
It wasn’t exactly that she wanted there to be more excitement; that would imply something along the lines of being caught occurring. She didn’t want that. That would be bad. She had just expected something different than what was happening (which was a whole lot of nothing). She, for the most part, continued on with her life in its normal, everyday pattern. The only inclusion was Kyle -- not that that was a bad thing. She liked Kyle.
She talked to Kyle in the comic book store on her regular Wednesday trips. She had casually mentioned to Meredyth that she enjoyed talking to the boy who worked there. She would have been willing to wager that security had mentioned that in their reports at least two weeks before she had. That was okay. She wanted it to go that way.
Connor had agreed that the best course of action was to hide in plain sight. If Meredyth thought that she was acting oddly or hiding things from her, she wanted there to be an obvious reason available for it. Background checks would still be run (she had no doubt about that), but Meredyth might not be so quick to draw some conclusions if she kept pushing her in the direction of some other ones.
It wasn’t as though she had been expecting high speed car chases and self-destructing messages (she wasn’t an idiot). She had just been expecting to be doing more. She understood the concept of laying groundwork. If she suddenly added previously unknown persons to her life, then that would be suspicious (insanely suspicious given her usual ducking of social obligations).
Truthfully, she suspected that what they really were was a backup plan for Connor in case he got truly desperate (she had even admitted that to him during that original conversation). He wasn’t going to depend on them unless he absolutely had to depend on them. Anything that she happened to overhear in the meantime was just an added bonus. She was disappointed, but she guessed she understood. Connor didn’t have much of a reason to trust the future of his family’s company to the acting abilities of a couple of teenagers.
That didn’t stop her from wondering what it was that Connor wasn’t sharing about his concerns. It wasn’t that she didn’t think that blocking Walsh Industrial Solutions (which meant Wyatt which in turn meant Meredyth) from having any involvement in Ridley Resources was an important goal. She just had a chronic nagging feeling that there was something more specific at stake.
On the other hand, spying of the variety she was participating in did have its entertaining moments. They had made a decision to make Kyle’s presence in her house a not unprecedented event in case they ever needed the option for some reason. It might never be needed, but it was better to have Kyle there with nothing overtly suspicious (to what they were really doing anyway, it would need to be suspicious for other reasons) going on once or twice than to wait until it was actually needed.
To that purpose, Lia had hung out at the shop until Kyle’s shift was over one Wednesday and brought him home with her. She hadn’t given any warning that she was going to have company. She had given a heads up to Dave that she was going to be hanging out at the comic book store for longer than usual and that he might want to make himself comfortable (the idea of him standing at the door waiting on her for almost two hours had made her feel moderately guilty).
He hadn’t taken her seriously at first (even though she had taken to lingering in the shop for longer periods already), but he had wandered in and taken a seat on the bench next to the front window after about forty five minutes. Knowing that Meredyth would be grilling the man after she found out about her deviation from schedule, she had tried to provide fodder along the lines that she wanted reported. When someone else was in the shop, she browsed. When she was the only customer, she hung around the counter chatting with Kyle and doing her level best to make semi flirty comments that (to her amusement) made him blush.
Dave had done a double take when Kyle exited the shop with her. His jaw had nearly dropped to the sidewalk when the two of them linked hands. She had to try really hard to pretend that she didn’t notice his reaction. The trail of dropped jaws that they left in their wake as they entered her house and made their way up the stairs to her bedroom didn’t make it any easier to pretend to be oblivious.
When the door was safely closed behind them, the first thing that she had done was to turn on her stereo and spin the volume dial as high as it would go. Kyle had been confused.
“Isn’t that a little loud?” He had asked leaning toward her as if he didn’t think she could possibly hear him over the background noise. He wasn’t completely wrong, but that had been no reason for him to practically shout the question directly into her ear. She was lucky that she hadn’t come out of the day with permanent hearing loss -- not from the stereo, but from Kyle’s compulsion to shout when confronted with the noise. She still winced at the memory.
“You are really bad at this, aren’t you?” She had questioned making a point of speaking at a volume where she was sure that he could hear her but without the shouting. She was hoping that he would catch the hint as she dropped her bags next to her desk and made a “feel free” gesture with her hands to encourage him to do the same. He put his backpack next to her messenger bag and looked at her with confusion.
“I think I’m insulted,” he’d told her with just a twinge of a question in the words. He had leaned in and shouted again. Clearly, subtle hints were not the way to go when dealing with Kyle McKee. She remembered wondering if that rule applied to teenage boys in general. She still hadn’t decided about that one. She didn’t spend much time around teenage boys.
“Please don’t shout,” she had told him at the same volume of her previous statement. “It really isn’t necessary.” He had blinked at her and seemed to process the difference in speaking voice level that the two of them had been using.
“Okay,” he had said at a decidedly more comfortable level. “Is this better?” She had nodded and smiled before going back to their previous line of conversation.
“You’ve obviously never lived with security guards around,” she had explained. “And definitely not with the kind my sister employs. We need them to not be able to hear anything in here.”
“Hence the obnoxiously loud music,” Kyle had concluded. He had looked thoughtful as if he was trying to figure out some sort of a flaw in her logic. She hadn’t waited for him to announce his findings.
“See, you catch on quick,” she had said with a smirk. “It’s one of your redeeming qualities.”
“Cute,” he had rolled his eyes.
“I try,” she had retorted with a shrug.
“Isn’t there one problem with that?” He had asked seemingly having come to the end of his searching for holes in her logic.
“And that would be?” She had prompted.
“Do you usually listen to music this loudly?” He had inquired.
“No,” she had responded.
“Isn’t that going to make them suspicious?” He had pointed out as if she wouldn’t have thought of such a thing on her own.
“That’s part of the point,” she had informed him wondering if he would draw conclusions on his own or if she would have to spell it all out for him.
“You want them to be suspicious?” He had actually sounded disturbed by the thought.
“Right,” she had agreed. “I just want them to be suspicious for all the wrong reasons.”
“You’ve lost me,” the boy in front of her had admitted as he leaned back against her dresser as if settling in for a lecture. It had been her turn to roll her eyes. She had no intention of giving a lecture. She had just offered him an explanati
on.
“It’s simple misdirection, Kyle,” she had told him with as much patience as she had been capable of mustering. “We’re giving them something obvious to focus on so that they don’t go looking for other explanations.” The boy had still looked clueless. Her no subtlety penetrates the adolescent male brain hypothesis remained unchallenged by opposing evidence. “No one is going to think that you are here engaging in semi corporate espionage if they are busy chuckling over the fact that we are up here making out.”
“Oh,” Kyle had muttered in a much lower tone than he had yet managed during the interlude. She had only managed to hear because of a short dip in the music still blaring from her speakers. It had been impossible, however, to miss the pink tinge that had drifted across his face and all the way to the tips of his ears. She had wondered if he realized how cute it was when he did that.
Yes, spying was not as exciting as she had expected, but it did have its moments -- even if those moments consisted of being amused at Kyle’s expense. If nothing else, she had that perk. No matter what had started this whole thing, she and Kyle were becoming good friends (both for pretend and for real). It was nice to have someone around that she could actually talk to, and she suspected that Kyle was equally pleased to have someone around that it was safe to confide his own concerns in -- whether they were about Anna or about their lack of knowledge of what Connor was protecting. The two of them (she and Kyle) were a team (even if they weren’t accomplishing much), and it was nice to be part of a team.
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 9
