Covert Cover Cracked

by Missy Marciassa

  The doorbell rang.

  Elle fought to hide a grin, trying to tame herself down to just a smile, as she answered the door. She didn’t want to give away her surprise performance until after dinner. “Ready for some fun?”

  Lyle’s strained, barely-there smile told her he wasn’t. Yet.

  Determined not to be deterred so easily, she pulled him close for a kiss, which he reluctantly returned. His hug was more like just a quick squeeze. She shut the door behind him.

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked, heading for the kitchen. Let him get the rear view now.

  “Certainly.” Lyle sat down on the futon and watched as she went into the kitchen to pour him one. If he appreciated the view, he kept it to himself. She wasn’t sure why she offered him wine. Something told her she needed to start mainlining bourbon into him now if her dance wasn’t going to be a complete bust.

  It wasn’t fair, really. She didn’t get upset when he had to work late on a case. Pointing that out was likely to make things worse, as she’d learned in the past. She forced a smile as she brought his glass of wine to him, carrying her own (it was her third since after work) in her other hand. She sat down right next to him on the couch, so close their thighs touched, but he just leaned back and took a sip.

  He was definitely pissed.

  Awkward pause. “So, how was court today?”

  Lyle shrugged. “My opening went well.”

  “Great!” She wanted to cringe at the overly-chipper tone of her voice but couldn’t stop herself. “The opening is a key part of battle, right?” He spoke of courtroom strategies as if they were war tactics.

  Lyle drained his glass of wine and set it down on the coffee table before sitting back. Normally this was when he’d put an arm around her and pull her close, but tonight he just let his arms fall by his sides. It was weird to have his arm laying between them but not touching her.

  After several moments of stretched out silence, Elle drained her own glass and set it down with more force than she intended. Now her movements were all off, and she felt lightheaded. During her field training, they had talked about the importance of developing a tolerance for alcohol, but she was still working on that: she didn’t drink that much. As the alcohol settled in, she had less control over the impatience simmering within her.

  “Okay, how long are you going to be mad? Tell me-” she checked the glowing numbers of the timer in the kitchen. “Will you be over this within the next seventeen minutes, when dinner will be ready?”

  Lyle balled his hands into fists. “I’m not mad-”

  She glanced at his fists and then met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

  “Okay, I-” He took a deep breath, clearly fighting for control, which wasn’t like him at all. “What the hell was so important in the stacks last night?”

  She braced herself. “I was working; I didn’t get your message-”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Elle, you’re a libra-” He caught himself as she glared. He knew she hated being called a Librarian, a term she deemed antiquated. “You work in a library. What in Sam Hell is so urgent you have to work late?”

  And here they went. She just managed to suppress her sigh. What would be so urgent in a library? “I- there are some problems with the search program I developed.” For once, she was grateful for lazy students. “Some students started complaining, Raleigh of course loved it, and I-” Now at least she could let the sigh escape. “I had to get to work on it.”

  Lyle’s gaze narrowed the way it did when he sensed an inconsistency. He may have a playful attitude, but he was as sharp as they came. Elle loved smart guys but with her employment situation, it made things difficult.

  “You were working on your program for the library.”

  She nodded, trying to keep her eyelids up. She’d overdone it with the wine, something that was not going to help her now.

  “This is the program that improves students’ ability to locate the appropriate library resources.”

  Again she nodded. So far, so good.

  “Funny.” His eyes were searing as they focused on hers. “I thought books were kept in the stacks. Not computers.”

  Shit. She blinked like an idiot. He had a good point. She had been so focused on the idea of performing a burlesque routine for him, she hadn’t thought through her cover story beyond working in the stacks. He’d seen her working on programming stuff from home. “Not quite.” Her voice sounded rather weak even to herself. “There are computers up there.”

  They were so old they belonged in a museum, but he didn’t need to know that little fact. “I was working on them.”

  The intensity of his gaze would make Mason proud.

  “I also had to check some actual catalogues in the stacks: to make sure they were included in the system.” The words sounded good; they were spilling out of her so fast she didn’t have time to really think about them. Not the most effective way to develop a cover story, but it wasn’t like this was a formal op.

  Lyle squeezed his eyes shut as he ran a hand through his hair, looking like he was about to pull out a handful. “And it had to be done last night?”

  She met his searching gaze with a direct one of her own.

  “Yes.” Knowing this conversation was going nowhere, she stood, forced to pause for a moment to let the wine-induced light-headedness pass. “Look- you may not think my work is important-”

  “Of course I think your work is important-”

  “-but I don’t give you grief when you have to work late.” She headed for the kitchen, but he was right behind her, hot on her heels.

  “I know your work is important. But dammit, Elle-”

  “Dammit, nothing.” Elle checked the doneness of the chicken. All white meat, no sign of pink: it was ready. “We didn’t even have plans last night. I didn’t cancel on you-”

  “I just don’t understand. What the hell are you working on that takes so much of your time?” Lyle threw up his hands. “You’re an Information Scientist for libraries: seems like a nine-to-five job to me. Just- just give me an answer that makes sense for once.”

  This was really not going well. She shouldn’t have had a drop of alcohol. “What, exactly, about my answers doesn’t make sense?” Time to stall while she tried to kick her brain into gear.

  “Okay.” Lyle folded his arms, ready to begin his cross-examination. “Why is everything so urgent with your job?”

  Good question. “I don’t work for a local public library: I work for the Library of Congress and for the entire Virginia university library system-”

  “What about that position requires you to exercise so hard you’re covered in bruises?” Lyle appreciated her toned body, but the many bruises she suffered in training hadn’t escaped his watchful eye, either.

  She gave him a little pout she learned from her friend Marni. “I thought you liked me getting in shape.”

  “You know I do.” Lyle wasn’t going to be distracted. “But I also like it when things add up.”

  She gave him a smile. “I’m one of a kind.” Even for the CIA, she was unusual: an analyst who was also field rated. She was a kickass Information Scientist (Librarian for those who refused to keep up with the times), which did make her unusual. She just couldn’t tell people how she was unusual.

  “Why do you own a firearm?”

  Yeah, accidentally leaving her firearm out for him to find hadn’t been one of her finer moments. She had been exhausted after a grueling seventy-two hour training exercise. “Self-protection.” She repeated her story. “I did have my apartment burglarized: Marni wound up in the hospital-”

  “And the bullet-proof vest?” Lyle’s eyes practically bored holes into her.

  Found with the firearm. Dammit. Another thing she had learned in field training: once an operative began with a cover story, she had to commit to it and not break down under questioning. “If I’m going to have to fire a firearm, I want to protect myself from the other guy-”

  Lyle’s eye r
oll told her he still didn’t buy that one. She had thought she was lucky he didn’t find any of her manuals on explosives, since that would have been really hard to explain, but this was still bad. She refused to let herself flinch from his gaze. She was committed to this story now.

  After they stared each other down for several moments, he let his arms drop, as if surrendering. “One plus one doesn’t equal two with you, after a year of dating.”

  Elle realized he may be surrendering, but something was still wrong. Very wrong. “I don’t know what more I can tell you.” She felt an edge of panic.

  He studied her face as if, by looking at her long enough, he would figure everything out. “You work crazy hours in libraries throughout the state, own firearms, exercise like you’re training to join the MMA.”

  Elle steeled herself not to wince. She had been running through some exercises one morning, thinking he wouldn’t recognize they were martial arts moves. She’d been wrong.

  “I’ve never met your family-”

  He was going there? She’d told him about her parents, who were focused on their families with second spouses. “You know I haven’t gone back to Illinois to see them, and they’re not coming here.” She’d tried to get her mother to come- forget trying with her father- but her mother still hadn’t had time to come visit, and Elle wasn’t holding her breath.

  “Who are you?” he finished. “What are you hiding from me?”

  She felt a flash of irritation. Really, had she done anything wrong? Was it a crime to be unique? Maybe if she showed some claws herself, he would back down.

  “I’m an Information Scientist, not a genie. I don’t hang out in a bottle and materialize whenever summoned.”

  She shoved the pot off the hot eye on the stove onto a cool one to give herself a moment. Okay, he didn’t know what she really did professionally. That was a required condition imposed by the CIA. Yet, outside of that, he knew everything about her that mattered. She couldn’t control her parents’ lack of interest. Why couldn’t he just relax and be playful?

  “You’re busy all the time. On one hand, you don’t have time to get together and have fun. Yet we’re not really this serious couple, either. We don’t have enough time together to do much of anything.”

  That was news to her. “We aren’t serious?”

  “We’ve been dating for a year, and I haven’t even met your family.” Lyle sighed. “You’re a great woman, Elle, but this isn’t working.”

  She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. Seriously? “I missed your text last night. You’re that upset over it?”

  Lyle’s gaze flitted behind her to the stove to the cupboards to the ceiling- everywhere but her face. “You know I believe in working hard, but I like to have fun, too, and-” He finally met her gaze. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re never around.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Now she was folding her arms across her chest. The injustice was bitter. Things were just about to get better now that her field training was completed. “You’re breaking up with me because I’m not available at your beck and call?”

  Lyle sighed. “I don’t mean to be dismissive of your work, Elle. Really. I know you’re smart and dedicated to your job, and I admire that, I really do, but this- this feels like being a married couple, struggling to make time to hang out, trying to balance two careers, and I just want to have fun when I’m not working.”

  He may have looked apologetic, but he also looked resolute. Her reassurance about being around more would fall on deaf ears.

  The wine soured in her stomach. She thought about offering to introduce him to her family: they could fly up to Illinois, and he could see for himself what they were like, but she didn’t want to even go through that. They were the only people in her life who hadn’t even realized how busy she was because they rarely spoke anyway. She had a feeling it wouldn’t matter at this point; hell, meeting her parents might make things worse.

  “We don’t have fun?” She knew she was serious; it was part of why they joked about him giving her “tutorials” in how to play. Yet she had made progress. Maybe she should tell him to hang on, she’d be right back, and whip out her burlesque outfit. But if he walked out on her when she was dressed like that, or forced himself to sit through her routine with a polite look on his face, or even slept with her out of pity before breaking up with her tomorrow, that would just suck. Really suck.

  “When you have time,” Lyle said. He shrugged, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You just don’t have much of it.”

  She couldn’t tell him she was through with field training. It didn’t matter anyway: even though she didn’t have hours of training exercises, she could be called out on a field op at any time, so she couldn’t anticipate how many text messages she might miss. How did she finally get her professional life where she wanted it only to have her personal life fall apart? She let her arms fall to her sides. She’d worked too hard at the agency to quit now. “Well, if you require a girlfriend to be on call twenty-four-seven, then I guess you’re right: this won’t work.”

  Lyle started to leave. She watched him from the kitchen, unable to make her legs move. How had this happened? He paused at the door. “I- I wish you all the-”

  “Yeah, yeah- same here,” she interrupted. Hopefully he’d just leave.

  Lyle nodded. “Well, good-bye, then.”

  She nodded back as he opened the door and left. She heard the click of the door as it closed. There was something so final about a door click.

  Chapter 4

  Thank God she hadn’t greeted Lyle at the door wearing her burlesque costume.

  The thought drifted into Elle’s consciousness as she stood in the kitchen, numb. Lyle had actually broken up with her because she didn’t respond to his surprise text last night. Seriously?

  She looked around the kitchen, noticing each blink of her own eyes. It wasn’t even like she canceled plans with him.

  Yet even as disbelief settled in, part of her knew it wasn’t just last night. It had been the whole damn year. Lyle worked hard and played hard, and he wanted a playmate when he was ready to blow off steam. She had been gone a lot over the past year; they had only been dating for about a month when she started her training to become field rated. And the questions he had about her activities- well, he wasn’t dumb.

  But was it fair to expect her to be available at his beck and call? It would seem completely irrational if she wanted him to blow off a court case or something to hang out with her. Did it matter if he knew what exactly she was doing for work or not? Her word that she was working should be good enough. The double-standard left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  As for her family situation, Elle knew it was unusual. Lots of people came from divorced families, but most parents weren’t quite as, well, “hands off” as hers were. She’d long ago accepted the fact that she couldn’t change them. Their disinterest was a big part of why it was so important for her to have a personal life: she eventually wanted the family she hadn’t had growing up. Was her family going to be a barrier to that? Her head began to ache at the thought. She couldn’t deal with that one right now.

  No longer hungry, Elle put the cover on top of the pot of cooling chicken. Couldn’t he have broken up with her over the phone, before she went through all this trouble? She wanted to wince at the callousness of her thought but couldn’t stop the flicker of indignation. Really. He’d sat on her couch, drinking her wine, knowing what he was going to do.

  She sat down, picked up her tablet from the coffee table and pulled up web chat to see if her best friend from college, and roommate for her Charlottesville apartment, Marni, was around. Her other best friend, Tina, was studying interior design in Europe for the next three months.

  Marni answered right away. Elle could see the stacks of papers and legal textbooks piled up next to her. She was hitting the books hard in her second year of law school. Since she had never been one to study much while an und
ergrad, Elle thought it was about time she had to put in some real work, but she didn’t share that opinion.

  “I’m single again,” Elle announced as soon as they connected.

  Marni’s eyes widened as her surprise extinguished the bleariness in them. “What? What the hell happened?”

  Elle flopped back onto her own futon. “He sent me a text last night, I didn’t get it, and so he dumped me tonight.”

  Marni blinked. “He dumped you over a missed text?”

  “Crazy, huh?” Elle swung her feet up onto her coffee table, stretching out her legs. “I cooked him dinner and everything to make up for missing a spontaneous text.” She didn’t want to talk about the burlesque bit just yet. Maybe never. She used to share everything with Marni, but they were adults now: not everything could (or should) be shared.

  Even through their web cameras, she could feel Marni’s scrutiny as she watched her friend’s eyes narrow. “Nothing else happened?”

  “Nope.” She shook her head. Somehow, it seemed like she should be more upset about this. Well, she was upset. She would miss playing with Lyle. But her sadness was tempered with a healthy dose of indignation. “He said he didn’t feel like he knew me.”

  Marni’s brow wrinkled. “What? How could he not know you?”

  “Not understanding why I work so much and not having met my parents.” Elle shook her head. “What the hell am I supposed to do about my parents?”

  “It is weird.” Her friend looked thoughtful. “Not break-up-with-you weird, but it’s weird. It’s not your fault, though. You can’t do anything about them.”

  “Thank you!” Elle at least felt vindicated there.

  Marni tilted her head. If she were a dog or cat, her ears would’ve perked up. “Are you eating cookie dough?”

  “Huh?” Even as she spoke, Elle realized what she was referring to. When Preston, her fling who became more than just a fling to her heart despite what her head kept telling her, had broken up with her, she had resorted to eating raw cookie dough. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded: the ice cream shop had been out of cookie dough ice cream, and when she went to the store, she was going to pick some up until she realized that, really, the ice cream was superfluous since she liked the cookie dough the most. So she just bought some cookie dough mix, made it, and ate that. It had all made sense at the time but neither Marni nor Tina had let her live that particular indulgence down.