Sassy Beth claps. “Okay, we’ve got eighteen. I’m assigning you to teams and positions. No trading!”
Oh. Great. I scan my memory for what sport we’re playing, if I can remember the announcements from church. The mesh bag of mitts, bats and balls gives it away. Softball.
Danny turns back and finds me lurking there. (Subtlety, the strength of the spy.) He shoots me a quick grin. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I toss a pointed look at the game equipment. “Play much softball?”
“Nope. You?”
“Not really. I’m here for the food. I’m starving, and I haven’t gotten to the grocery store yet today.” That sliver of the truth slices between my ribs, though it’s miles away from dangerous.
Danny gestures at the table, offering to get me a plate (reason #4), but first Sassy Beth and a harangued Campbell appear in front of us. “Talia, batting team. Danny, infield.”
Joy, joy, joy. Campbell gives Danny a glove and a grimace.
Sassy Beth isn’t done. She holds out a cardboard box. “Turn in your cell phones.”
I can’t stop a laugh. She has no idea what’s on my phone (mostly my coworkers’ phone numbers and CIA special apps). Not letting it off my person.
Beth flinches. She’s not used to people failing to fall under her spell. “C’mon, I know you have it. Don’t want the entire team browsing Facebook instead of playing and having fun.”
I sidestep the Facebook issue. “Couldn’t ask you to assume full liability for my phone and any damage that might occur while it’s in your possession, so I’ll just keep it.” I shoot her an I’m-sure-you-understand smile.
Beth opens and closes her mouth a minute, then shoves the box in Danny’s direction. Geez. She’s couching it nicely, but pushing us like this could cost her Canadian Card.
“Yeah, same,” he says with a sorry-I’m-not-sorry shrug.
“Ugh.” A scowl flashes across Beth’s face. At least one of us just got on her bad side.
“That was awesome,” Danny murmurs as soon as Beth’s out of earshot. (Reason #78.)
Effective, yes, but awesome? Obviously not winning me any friends. “That’s why people hate lawyers.”
“I’m a fan right now.” In some imperceptible way, Danny shifts closer to me.
Maybe it’s winning me one friend. But I’m not here for that. Right?
Yeah. Right.
Beth roars, “Okay, play ball!” from directly behind us. (Where did she come from?)
Yeeesh. Danny and I exchange an expression like we’d both rather stay here, but I march off to join my team. Not exactly surprised Beth assigned me and Danny to different teams. Ten guesses who’s team Danny’s on.
Hers? Bingo. She wouldn’t put them side-by-side in the batting lineup and force the teams to sit in order — but Beth does assign him first base while she plays second like her life depends on every pitch.
Reason #11: he sees through Sassy’s subtle scheming. Reason #82: he still manages to be nice to her without leading her on.
At the top of the second inning, we share an amused look in passing. “Beth got you to first base, eh?” I tease him.
Danny laughs (slightly uncomfortably). “No, but if she could walk me, I think she might.”
We both grin, and my silly heart soars like a pop fly.
That’s when it hits me: if I let this go on, I stand to lose a whole lot more than a softball game.
I manage not to embarrass myself through the first inning, and it’s not my fault Arjay made it to first. Now the real pressure’s on: Talia steps up to bat. Another piece to the puzzle: what does “not really” playing softball mean?
The answer seems apparent fast. Talia pops AB Beth’s first pitch up behind home plate. She winces and ducks away, though she’s well clear of the drop zone. Joel at catcher doesn’t bother running for the ball.
“Strike one!” Apparently Sassy Beth’s both second base and the umpire now.
“Foul!” Joel shouts back. He tosses the ball to AB Beth.
“Softball rules,” Sassy Beth screeches. “Fouls count as strikes!”
That tone must wear on everyone’s nerves, but I doubt many other people are fighting down revulsion and panic because of the memories it brings back.
AB Beth throws two balls and then a good strike. “Strike two!” Sassy Beth looks back at the outfielders. “Easy out! Bring it in.”
The outfielders reluctantly trudge forward ten feet.
Talia moves away from the plate. “That the best you can do?”
“Swing, batter, batter,” I call, totally devoid of enthusiasm.
Her lips twist, but she’s fighting a smile in her eyes. She steps to the plate, takes a serious stance and nods to AB Beth. Beth lobs her best pitch today. Talia swings hard — and PING.
The ball sails way, way out into left field. Um, whoa. Jenny jogs after the ball.
And Talia’s still at home, watching in stunned silence.
“Run, Talia!” I beckon for her to get moving.
She drops the bat and takes off for me, running a little faster than Jenny. I can’t help myself again: I hold out a hand as she runs by, and she slaps my palm. By the time Jenny’s got the ball, Talia’s rounding second.
Then they both hit the accelerator. Jenny stops and fires the ball to Joel at third — the girl can throw.
“No!” Sassy Beth shouts. “Home!”
Joel catches the ball a couple yards from base and goes for the double play, swiping at Talia with his mitt. She drops to one hip, out of range of Joel’s tag, and slides the last feet to the base.
Joel pivots to throw to Campbell, waiting by home, but it’s too late. Arjay crosses the plate. He and Talia hoot in celebration.
“Batter up!” Sassy Beth tries to keep the game moving over Talia’s team’s noise.
Talia doesn’t make it home after the next batter strikes out now that Jenny’s pitching, and the last guy pops up a fly ball that Sassy Beth catches. She hasn’t noticed everyone else would rather talk than play by now. At the inning switch, Talia marches off the field.
“Where are you going?” Beth shouts.
“To eat.” Talia has the same smile from earlier, polite to the point of almost condescending. “I’m partial to not dying.”
Talia passes me, then she calls my name. I turn around.
“Thanks. I always perform better under pressure.”
I swear she winks before she heads for the food again. I’m done with softball, and I don’t care how obvious this is. I’m following.
“Danny, where are you going?” Beth hollers.
I look back to repeat Talia’s excuse, but keep moving in her direction. “To eat.”
“You ate before we started.”
She’s watching me. That’s cool. Not. “I’m a guy. Gotta eat every twenty minutes.”
Before I turn around, I see a couple other people coming this way, too. Didn’t mean to lead a mutiny against Sassy Beth.
Oh well. By the time I catch up to Talia, she’s already tearing into a bag of tortilla chips. I gesture at the three open bags on the table.
She dismisses them. “They’ll be stale, sitting out this long.” Apparently that rule goes for everything, because she also twists the lid off a new jar of salsa instead of using the open one. She dumps half the bag of chips and plenty of salsa onto her paper plate, then rips into a new package of chocolate chip cookies.
I can’t stand girls who don’t eat.
“You don’t really play, huh?” I ask.
“Nope. Didn’t ask if I can hit the ball.” Her shields are down, and I get another glimpse of the real Talia.
Someone I want to get to know. Know what’s a good way to get to know someone? A date.
Before I can work up to that, her phone rings. She looks at the full table, then around. Nowhere to put her plate.
“Here.” I take it. She smiles, another real Talia smile, then pulls out her phone. She sees the screen, and her whole countenance changes. Not s
hielded. Serious. She angles away, but I can still hear her side of the conversation. “Hi. . . . Yeah? . . . Now? Yep, ten minutes.”
Talia glances back at me and mouths, “Work,” then motions toward the parking lot.
She’s leaving.
I nod, like I’m okay with ending this so soon. She gestures to the plate I’m holding for her, then motions for me to take it.
Hooray. Consolation corn chips.
I’m not quite obvious enough to watch her leave. I turn to the group gathering around the food table.
“Guess you were hungry,” Sassy Beth mutters, eyeballing my plate.
I shrug and don’t bother correcting her. “A guy’s gotta eat.”
She maneuvers closer, her eyes saying, Isn’t this the perfect coincidence? “I love to cook.”
Another warning light flashes in my mind: she’ll make herself into whatever she thinks I want. Like she doesn’t have a personality of her own, doing whatever it takes to keep me around.
Can I get away fast enough?
Before I literally run from her, I stop myself. Desperation isn’t necessarily a sign of psychopathy. It’s actually sad, and I should be nice to her. So that’s what I do. “That’s cool.”
“I could make you dinner some time.”
“Oh.” I hunt for a way to make this rejection nice. Or an exit strategy.
Campbell bounces over just in time. “Hey! Danny!”
“We need to dial down your caffeine drip, dude.” I take the opportunity to extricate myself from Beth’s grasp and walk away with Campbell.
“Do you play Xbox?” he asks.
“Used to, before mine broke.” No mentioning who did that. But it definitely wasn’t me.
“Joel and I need someone else to play. Want to jump in?”
“Sure — I’m busy next week, but if you want to bring yours over after that, I’ve got a huge TV.”
He beams like someone in a manic cycle. “Sounds like fun!”
He starts away, but I speak up first. “Hey, thanks for . . .” I jerk my chin over my shoulder in Sassy Beth’s direction.
Campbell shakes his head, mystified.
“Never mind.” Lucky timing then.
The activity devolves into sitting in the shade chatting. Joel breaks out a guitar, so girls are hanging on him for a change.
Arjay strolls over to plop down by me. “You should ask her out.”
I raise an eyebrow. If anyone else came to talk to me about my love life, they’d probably mean Sassy Beth, but considering I barely finished his friend’s food, I don’t think I have to ask who Arjay’s talking about.
“Seriously. Here.” He fishes a piece of paper and a pen out of his pocket and scribbles something. He offers the paper to me. “Her number’s wrong in the ward directory. You should text her.”
That would be weird. I accept the paper, a phone number. My mind takes off at Concorde speed. Is he telling me this because he thinks I’m cool, or because Talia and I are both old — or because Talia said something to him?
Too much to hope for the last one?
Maybe it’s too much to hope at all. Yeah, she’s got the whole international woman of mystery, puzzle I need to solve, yet totally out of my league appeal. But what will I do if it turns out I like her even more than I already do?
There’s obviously more to her than what she shares willingly, but I have no idea whether that’s caution because she’s reserved, or she’s crazy.
I’m supposed to be starting over — but not starting the same ordeal over.
I am so not happy to be sitting in this van again. It’s not cabin fever or awkwardness at being in close quarters with Elliott. (Hint: it’s because he dragged me away from Danny. And my dinner. I’m doubly grumpy.) We don’t even have anything to watch, strategically parked halfway between our two potential leaks’ houses. Just waiting on Langley to tell us which one’s guilty, but that’s not why tension’s tightening along my vertebrae.
“So,” Elliott starts, “who’s this guy?” His cajoling makes it clear he doesn’t mean our target.
Oh, great. “A guy.”
“A guy that’s got you blushing after one conversation.”
And my face gets warm. “Two.”
Elliott grins. “Come on, give me something to work with.”
“Yeah, that’s a big no.” My tone kills the conversation, a little more heavy-handed than I really mean to be.
Okay, maybe the whole close-quarters-with-Elliott thing’s grating on me more than I want to admit. I’ve made it through two days with him, but stilted conversation and focusing on work won’t get us through a couple hours in a van, let alone the rest of our week. Our careers.
Elliott is my closest friend — was. Now it’ll never be the same. And for what?
I have to know.
“Why?” My voice scythes through the quiet.
“Why what?” Elliott keeps his tone light, but he’d have to be brain-dead to not understand.
I’m not giving up that easily. “Why’d you do it? The truth.”
He looks into my eyes, and I backpedal. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t care. I should pretend none of it happened. My barricades fly up, and suddenly I realize exactly why I hate what Elliott did.
Because it means he doesn’t know me like I thought he did. It means I’m alone.
“It was nothing,” he says at last. “Part of the cover.”
I can’t turn away. I don’t dare. Because even in the dim streetlight, I can see he’s lying.
He hides the lie with that don’t-you-love-me? grin. “Don’t tell me you’re developing a crush on me.”
“When are you going to get over yourself?”
“But there’s so much to love.”
The tension twisting along my spine begins to dissipate. He’s flirting, but the joking gleam in his gaze says this is his usual over-the-top silliness. I don’t know exactly what he was lying about, but we’ll make it through . . . whatever this was.
Elliott leans across his armrest, turning more teasing. “Seriously, what’s his name?”
I make a sound between a sigh and a groan. Anything to get him off my case. “Danny, okay?”
“Told you you’d have to tell me. Sounds like a geek.”
I roll my eyes. “Shut up,” I say, teasing him right back.
“How’d you meet him?” Elliott presses. “Work?”
“Church.”
“And you’re sure he’s not a geek?”
I shove his shoulder, and he shifts back into the driver’s seat. “Shut up,” I repeat.
“Come on, throw me a bone here. Your eyes locked across the crowded chapel? Your hands brushed when he passed you the plate?”
“We don’t have collection plates.” Should’ve known better than to even give up a first name.
After a minute of silence, Elliott grumbles again. “Seriously? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
What does he want to know? I focus on our first conver-sation. “I was sitting in the foyer during church, and he came out and talked to me.”
“Coincidence? I think not.” He waggles his eyebrows.
“I think so. He couldn’t have seen me from the chapel.”
My phone chimes, saving me from the rest of Elliott’s interrogation. I check my cell: a text message. From Langley. We’ve got our leak. “Voiceprint match. Marcus Lee.”
Elliott starts the van, and we head out to get the last evi-dence to nab our leak.
We’re halfway there when my phone dings with a new email. I’m so excited to be tying up this case that I can’t conjure up a specter of worry about any of my other projects. Until I see the subject line: FEATHERSTONE analysis.
Our ballroom dancing spymaster. I cast a clandestine glance Elliott’s way. Not sure I’m ready to go back undercover as his dance partner. We might’ve made it through this time, but what would another hundred hours of one-on-one practice do?
I’ll tell him Monday. I slide the phone
back in my pocket. Elliott navigates into a quiet neighborhood. We cruise past our target’s brick house and park down the block. It’s getting dark, and his car’s out front. After a few minutes of silent surveillance from the back of our van, Elliott hops on the phone to line up his Arabic translator for the last evidence to implicate Lee. (She owes Elliott a favor. I bet they all do.)
Elliott finally gets her on the line and directs me to cue up the latest recording on the laptop. I help him, then scoot out of the way so he can get at the computer. But as I move, I spot it — Lee’s porch light is on now.
Is he going somewhere?
Yep. Leaving right now. I don’t know if he suspects anything, but if he slips away now, he could keep passing along diplomatic intelligence. (Again, Not. Okay.) We’ve got to stop him.
I grab an earpiece, a red wig (pays to be prepared) and my leather jacket, and run out the van’s back doors. If Lee notices me, we’re out of luck, so I duck behind the van to slip into the wig before I cross the street.
Lee’s concentrating too hard on sorting through his keychain to see my approach. I come even with him as he opens his car door. “Oh, hey!” I exclaim.
He looks up and smiles, rearranging his freckles. “Hi. Remind me how we know one another?”
“I played Chopin, and you admired it.” I’m a little too far away to shake hands. “Alaine Marchant. Just moved in around the corner, down the street about three blocks.” I point in that direction.
“Oh, that’s great. I’m Marcus Lee.”
In case I had any doubt, identity confirmed.
“So, how are you liking the neighborhood?”
Better get my flirt on. “Kind of quiet, but getting better all the time.”
He laughs, giving that line way more credit than it deserves.
Back to business with a natural getting-to-know-you question, just like with Danny. “What do you do for a living?” I ask.
“I work for the American Embassy.” Marcus makes it sound as though he’s a lot more than a secretary, propping his elbow on his car roof like he owns the entire diplomatic corps. (Wonder if he knows Galina.)
Spy Another Day Prequel Box Set: Spy Noon, Mr. Nice Spy, and Spy by Night in one volume (Spy Another Day Prequels clean romantic suspense trilogy) Page 19