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

  You know what? We’re alone, and we’re fantastic. So I kiss my husband like we just survived a lot more than an innocuous pickup. Only when the elevator slows do I step back (reluctantly). We stroll to our rooms, Danny’s smile reflecting exactly how satisfied I feel.

  “I assume we’re going through these files,” Danny says at his door. “Room service?”

  “That sounds—” Oh, crap. I’m meeting Valya and his girls tonight. I stop short, a disappointed sigh escaping. “Sorry. I can order you something, but I have another errand to run. Can’t take you this time.”

  The smile and the satisfaction drop from his face. “‘Take’ me.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” My voice is as sincere as I am, but he just studies me carefully. Then he heads into his room without a goodbye.

  Wait, how did that plan backfire? Defeat settles on my shoulders. I let myself into my room and empty my pockets onto the dresser. New hat, brochure from Arbat-Fitnes, receipts, change. Pocket litter, living my cover down to the details. I’ll need to get rid of the evidence of Arbat-Fitnes so no one’s suspicious. I tear the brochure to bits and flush it.

  A memory nags at me — something left undone (and not just with Danny). Something I should’ve destroyed. What was it? I took it from someone.

  From Garo. His business card. My stomach shrinks. Bad, bad, bad — how did I slip?

  I attack my dresser first, sorting through the papers and trash from every walking expedition. Nothing. I shuffle through the leaflets and receipts again, then stack them one by one. No business cards.

  Garbage. Empty.

  I scrutinize every horizontal surface in the room, rip off the bedsheets, shine my flashlight under the bed.

  I rock back on my heels and run my hands through my hair, tugging at my wig’s hairpins. Did someone take Garo’s card? Did I throw it away? That’s not secure.

  One last hope springs up: maybe I gave it to Danny. Or maybe he took it. I practically run to pound on his door. “Danny?” Panic rises even in my voice.

  He answers quickly. “You okay?”

  “Dunno.” I push past and beeline for his trash. Also empty. I scan his dresser, moving papers till I find a stack of business cards. Shcherbakov, Shcherbakov, Shcherbakov. My hands can’t keep up, and several cards flutter to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Danny asks slowly.

  “I’m missing something — something important.”

  “A business card?”

  I whirl on him. “How’d you know? Have you seen it?”

  “Not that I know of.” He closes his door, gesturing at the flurry of business cards left in my wake. “Whose card?”

  Like I can say that aloud. I point to the walls to remind him of the bugs. “My friend we ran into yesterday.”

  “Okay, we’ll find it. Checked your pockets?”

  “Yes.” I start on his dresser drawers, which are empty. Could I have stuck it in my suitcase? Doubtful.

  Danny pulls out his wallet and adds to the messy stack I just left. “I’m sure we can get his number.”

  “But I need the card — the card itself.” My stress levels spike with my blood pressure. If someone found that in my room, Garo could be in trouble. In danger. I may not love the guy, but I’m not trying to get him arrested. Or worse.

  “Hey.” Danny’s touches my shoulder. “Calm down.”

  You know the worst way to calm someone down? Telling them to calm down. I jerk away. “You don’t understand, I need this card. Now.”

  Danny studies me in silence a minute. “Don’t they have phonebooks in Russia?”

  “That’s not the point — if I don’t have that card, then I don’t know who does.” I enunciate each word, trying to make my real meaning clear: anyone could’ve come in our rooms and gotten it, and Garo would be a target.

  Danny backs up a step. “Yeah,” he admits, his tone begrudging, “but you could’ve dropped it anytime you took your coat on or off. It could be in the garbage somewhere.”

  “No” is all I can say out loud. I can’t bank on luck. In the field, you’d never keep contact evidence for anyone to find. With actual agents, officers memorize their numbers. They don’t keep business cards. They don’t use address books. They definitely don’t put them in their phones. To leave a number lying around where someone could find it could be a death sentence.

  Danny stares at me a minute longer but turns away. I attack his nightstand. The single drawer’s empty. Is someone targeting me? Did they search our rooms for this? I press my fingers to my eyes. What have I done?

  A hand lands on my shoulder and I whirl around before I can tell myself it’s Danny. He stares at me like we’re strangers, then finally holds out his other hand — a card. I snatch it: Garo Mirzoyan.

  “It was in my coat pocket.”

  Now that my lungs are free, I suck in oxygen. “Oh. Right.” Because I was wearing Danny’s coat when we ran into Garo.

  “You could use a night off,” Danny says. But he sounds uncertain. Like he’s not sure what I’ll say? He’s still staring like he’s never seen me before.

  “I need to go.” I slide Garo’s card into the secret pocket inside the lining of my sleeve.

  “Can’t it wait?”

  My shoulders fall. “My friend’s daughter is in the hospital. If I want to visit, it has to be tonight.”

  “Oh.” He nods, subdued, but that’s enough to launch my latest guilt trip. Everything was perfect five minutes ago. Why can’t I do anything right? Why can’t I make things better?

  But you know what? This assignment will be over tomorrow, and we can figure it out then. We have to. “It’s not far. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I head to the door. “Stay safe.”

  “You too.”

  Awesome.

  I shuffle to my room. The extra coat from Semyon waits on my desk. I stuff it in a bag. One benefit of hardly sleeping last night: the rest of my disguise is already cached and waiting — something a lot more conservative, a lot more like what I wore when I was a missionary. I can’t leave a bugged hotel as Talia, and I can’t walk up to Valya as Lori, but I can change en route to the hospital.

  I shake off the stress of losing the card and the situation with Danny. I’ve got enough stress tonight: recruiting Valya. Once I’m safe on the street, I can text Semyon about recruiting him. I take the stairs down and march through the lobby. A short man with dark hair sits on the gold couches, chatting on his cell phone. He finishes his call and stands as I pass. He stays with me, jogging down the stairs to the entrance to open the front doors.

  It’s normal Russian manners for a man to get the door for me — but to jog to do it? Could be chivalry. Could be a coincidence. Could be surveillance.

  I wait to see if he asks for a date, but he barely acknowledges me.

  My gut creeps downward. This guy pings my paranoid radar. I brush past and march out, like I haven’t already spent all day on these heels. (So glad I cached a pair of sensible shoes.)

  Maybe my subconscious takes me to the rynok, as good a place as any. I buy the first sunglasses I find, but I’m not really shopping — I just need a good crowd. I maneuver behind every pair and trio of people I find.

  Halfway through the market, I pause to admire a table of real lacquer boxes, but really I’m turning to see if my eager friend’s still back there.

  Short, slight and swarthy? Yep. Eager Igor’s still on my tail.

  I thread my way through the milling masses, putting as many people between me and him as possible. Odds aren’t in my favor when I’m the only person in a bright red coat. I can’t risk retrieving my disguise too soon, so I’ll try to lose him the easy way. At the other gates of the rynok, I stop to discuss honey with a vendor. He insists his linden honey’s worth every kopeck, while I subtly scan the crowd around me under the cover of my sunglasses. I’m not buying anything, so I let the vendor win the argument and walk away.

  Because Eager Igor�
�s still behind me.

  I may be running on fumes after two sleepless nights, but the energy in my system spikes. Gotta do better.

  I move to the market gates and remember Vkusno Lyubov′ (Delicious Love), the café with fantastic blini across the street and down the block. My chance to lose him. Plus, I skipped lunch, and I haven’t had authentic blini since we got here. I jog across the street in a gap in traffic. From inside the shop, a rundown little refuge, I scan the windows for Eager Igor’s approach.

  Not there.

  Whew. Still, I opt to keep my coat close instead of hanging it on the rack before I get in line. On my turn, I order a blin — no, two blini with blackberry, smetana and honey filling. I pick a table in the corner closest to the door and lay my coat over a chair. My blini are in front of me in less than two minutes, and I take my paper plate and bottle of water.

  The sour, tart and sweet of the berries, honey and smetana (kinda like sour cream) blends perfectly against the earthy wrapping (kinda like a crêpe ), and I sigh after the first bite. It’s even better knowing I lost my tail.

  After my third bite, the door swings open. It’s not the subarctic blast that makes me stop eating. It’s the man standing in the door. Eager Igor.

  My heart dips.

  Now that’s training. At that realization — that threat — my stomach also takes a dive. He’s FSB, and he’s after me. I set down my blin. Amazing what surveillance does to your appetite.

  He doesn’t look at me, but he doesn’t move to the counter, either. He hesitates in the doorway, blocking my escape.

  Joy.

  Finally, the shopkeeper shouts at him for letting in a draft, and he walks in. Not to the line. To a table.

  He’ll get fussed at again for taking up a seat without buying anything, but he settles in. Waiting me out.

  I need to eat — but I’m not staying here. I need to move, I need to go, I need to run. I need to step up my game.

  I take one more bite, then tug on my coat and grab my water bottle and bag. I push through the door, taking a long draught of water.

  The first trash can I pass, I toss the water without slowing. I check my peripheral vision. He’s back there.

  I shouldn’t dart out in front of a car to avoid surveillance, but there’s no traffic at this end of the block. I cut across the street diagonally, and he crosses at the same time. The light next to him turns green, and he has to watch cars. While he’s distracted, I pivot on my heel and hurry back to the corner past the café. The yellow trash bins are still here, still full (lost a great disguise in Ottawa that way once). Nobody behind me. I extract the parcel wrapped in black plastic from behind the bin.

  Leggings from my cache slide under my business skirt, making it easier to change into the knit maxi skirt. The balancing act of not letting anything or any body part actually touch the filthy ground or garbage makes me wish I’d taken up yoga. Once I’ve changed my coat and shoes, I pull off my hairpins, wig and cap, pull out my braids, then pull on a hat that nearly matches my dark braids. My other clothes and bag fit in my cached backpack and two makeup removing wipes later, I’m ready.

  Ready? In these flats, I could walk a surveillance evasion marathon.

  Once a turning delivery truck provides cover, I hit the street and pass the café again. The shopkeeper’s busy with a customer. Eager Igor? My heart seizes — but it’s not him. Unless he’s got a disguise that makes him forty years older and even shorter.

  And my blini’s still on the table. I’m still not hungry, but I need the food. I slip in and pick up the blini. With Eager Igor out there, I’ll let myself out the back. I venture down the dark hallway. The bathroom door swings open, and out walks my pursuer. Despite my pulse’s spike, I keep moving like I know where I’m going, like I don’t care he’s there, like I can breathe and think and walk normally.

  Like I’m not hunting an FSB officer in Shcherbakov, undercover as my own husband’s interpreter.

  The guy doesn’t look twice. He’s searching for a woman in a bright red coat, not a long dark one. I reach the end of the hallway and the back door — locked.

  Great.

  I could go back to the shop, risk running into my follower again, or I could try to get through. The door’s protected with a grate, but a rusted silver padlock holds it shut. Padlocks are ridiculously easy to open. If you’re good at picking locks. If you can find a good-sized rock. If you’ve got a shim.

  With my usual luck at lock picking (this afternoon was a huge exception), and without a rock (plus the noise will attract attention instead of avoid it), I’ve got one option. Luckily, I’m prepared as ever.

  I take off my backpack and hunt for my other clothes. Once again, I’ve sewn the right tool into my clothes. My tweed business skirt lining yields a thin sheet of metal I fashioned in Paris from a soda can. It’s all cut and ready, except that I need to bend it to make it work better. I curve it around the shackle. (MacGyver’s not the only one who uses improvised tools.)

  The shaped metal slides into the narrow gap between the shackle and the lock body, and the lock springs open.

  See you later, Eager Igor. I slip out the door and into the alley that leads back to the rynok. That honey vendor engages me, at the same price. “Two hundred rubles!” he squawks.

  I pause. I know better than to pay that much for that tiny bottle. “One twenty-five,” I say.

  Speaking Russian — speaking it well — always cuts your prices. The vendor agrees and recognition never flickers in his eyes.

  I stop by a florist’s booth and pick up something for Melanyushka. Flowers are standard gifts here, but always odd numbers unless you’re at a funeral, and no yellow ones, and be careful what kind. Russian flower symbolism is more complex than Victorian England’s. The florist helps me pick out a bouquet of five pale pink flowers. I leave the rynok and catch the first marshrutka, which is like a big passenger van crammed with as many seats as possible.

  I could swear I was a missionary again. I almost look around for my companion. Last time I lived here, I never went anywhere alone.

  But the women I was assigned to live with 24/7 as a missionary, Sestra Carter and Sestra Bulovskaya, aren’t in Rostov. And they’re not my companions anymore. Danny’s supposed to be.

  Not sure what he thinks of me right now. I only know that I feel very alone.

  Every time I come to a Russian hospital, I swear it’ll be the last. I don’t know what it is about the lights in hospitals here, but no matter how bright they are, it feels dim. Or maybe the lights just reveal how dingy things are, dirt no amount of scrubbing will clean. And then the smell. After five minutes, all I want to do is escape that odor of disinfectant and desperation.

  Even using all my spy skills, it takes a while to track down Melanyushka’s building. Bureaucracy might be the best defense against espionage. By the time I’ve found the right room, I’ve figured out that Melanyushka’s doctor is Yulia Yakovlevna, her diagnosis is throat cancer and her time is severely limited. (Health care privacy? Where do you think we are?)

  From the door, I can see four beds in the room, but only one’s still occupied. Facing the bed, Valya sits in a cheap chair, animatedly telling a Russian fairytale. “‘I’ll never leave my beloved village,’ Maryushka told Kashchei.”

  Hardly seems coincidental that the diminutive form the character in the story uses alludes to Melanyushka’s nickname.

  “And the evil sorcerer was so upset, he cast a spell. Maryushka transformed into a bird. Not any bird — the zhar-ptitsa.”

  I step in to see Melanyushka, smiling feebly at the mention of the mythic firebird. Plugged into IVs and tubes, she seems both older and younger than I remember. Her eyes are still wide and blue, but all their innocence has faded. Underneath them, dark circles bloom like bruises, pitiful and pleading. She’s reclining on pillows, like holding her head up is getting too hard. An embroidery hoop sits in her lap, forgotten as her father relays the dramatic story.<
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  “Maryushka grew long, beautiful tail feathers that glowed orange and amber and gold, like the embers of a bonfire. Before she could fly away, Kashchei transformed himself into a falcon and swooped down on her.” Valya uses his hands to mimic the falcon’s dive.

  He calls himself an old soldier, but anyone can see he has a storyteller’s heart.

  But he is a soldier, too. And that’s a big reason I’m here, to recruit him. Unless he decides to report me. A double-edged sword: the exact thing that makes him perfect for an agent makes him dangerous.

  “And he captured Maryushka the firebird to carry her away from her village,” he continues. “But Maryushka was true to her word. She could never leave her beloved village, so she shed her beautiful feathers, one at a time, as they soared over the land, leaving a piece of herself with her home. When the last feather fell from her tail, Maryushka died in the falcon’s claws, escaping Kashchei forever. But the firebird’s feathers burn on, appearing to lovers of beauty, and those who have lost hope.”

  Kinda grim (Grimm?), but most Russian fairytales are in the old-school macabre mode. Far from the worst thing a kid dying from cancer can hear.

  “Tell ‘Vassilisa and the Firebird,’” prompts another voice. I take another pace into the room to see Svetusya in a wooden chair by the bed’s head. She’s about twelve, just growing into that awful gawky phase, but she looks weary and older than her age, too. She picks up her sister’s embroidery hoop and starts to work.

  Valya begins the requested story. “Once, in a fairy tale—” He suddenly spots me and stops short to beam at me. “You came.”

  I return the grin. “Naturally. Hi, Svetusya — Sveta, Melanyushka.”

  Melanyushka regards me warily. I offer the flowers. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  She accepts the bouquet, squinting at me. Valya jumps to help. “Sestra Reynolds was one of the missionaries who taught your mother.”

  Sveta leaps from her chair and runs to throw her arms around my waist. “I thought so, but I didn’t think that was possible!”