Page 11 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

I give him a sly smile. “Plus, I’m pretty good at it. You know—the whole solving mysteries thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I think I gained my skill from all the kids at the middle school giving creative reasons as to what happened to their library book.”

Miles is looking at me, and there’s something in his expression I can’t quite identify. Something too still. Too unguarded. Softer. Like he’s really looking at me. Not the version of me who talks too much during murder mysteries or invents royal scandals for background mailmen. Like I’m a clue he’s been trying to solve for years.

My chest goes weirdly tight. “What?” I ask.

He blinks, and just like that, the expression is gone. His mouth curves into the easy Miles smile I know better than any other smile in the world—even with the bonus mustache. “I’m just trying to calculate how long it would take you to overthrow a very tiny country in order to help an exiled prince/mailman.”

I snort. “Three days. Two if I had top-notch outfits.”

“See?” he says, gesturing at me. “That’s why we’re friends. You make fictional political instability feel completely doable.”

Friends. The safest word in the world.

This is what Miles and I are good at. This easy, ridiculous, perfectly comfortable friendship. The kind where I can show up in a themed outfit and fuzzy socks, accuse background mailmen of royal exile, and have someone build the theory with me instead of looking at me like I’m too much. This is the kind of friendship people spend years trying to find, and most people never do.

And I’m smart enough to know that when you have something this good, you don’t mess with it.

CHAPTER 4

ALL HANDS ON DECK

MILES

We’ve started the second episode of The Village Detective, and Reese is stretched across my couch with her fuzzy yellow sock-clad feet against my thigh, a throw pillow hugged to her stomach, and an expression of deep concern on her face as Roxie Wallace accuses a cheerful florist of lying about her whereabouts. This is the kind of moment I am good at not wanting too much from.

In theory.

In reality, I want every part of it. Reese in my living room. Reese laughing at my fake mustache. Reese treating my couch like it is half hers. Reese making up character backstories and motivations with me.

Friendship is supposed to be the safe version of loving her. And most nights, I can almost convince myself it is enough.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I glance at the screen, and everything in me goes still. It’s the CSA, and it’s a call, not a text. I lift Reese’s legs off mine and swing my feet around to the floor. At this hour, a call means one of three things: something went wrong, something is about to go wrong, or someone needs us to stop something from getting worse.

I reach for my phone and stand. “I need to take this.”

Reese looks over, her eyebrows lifting behind her black cat-eye glasses. “Is that your very normal, very boring job?”

“I’m guessing that right now, it’s trying to be neither.” I step toward the kitchen and answer. “Miles.”

I don’t say much after that—I just listen. The longer I do, the more the easy warmth of the living room fades behind me. Gianna’s mission went wrong. A burned asset. An emergency briefing. All hands on deck. I end the call in less than a minute, but it feels like something has shifted hard enough to knock the whole night sideways.

Reese has the show paused, her eyes on me. “Everything okay?”

“Work thing,” I say. “I need to go in.”

Her gaze flicks to the clock on the wall. “Now? It’s almost ten.”

“And yet. Emergencies never really seem to care about how inconvenient they are.”

“So inconsiderate of them.”

For half a second, she studies me. I had hoped that my joking line had hidden my worry a bit, but Reese tends to notice more than most people do when it comes to stuff like this. I know that she’s sensing my emotions below the surface, and I hate that I can’t give her any details.

“Is Charlie going in too?” she asks. “Or is this a client-relations-only emergency?”