Page 111 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

As we’re in the elevator, heading down to the parking garage, I pull my phone out once more and reread Reese’s texts, trying to soak them in. Then I turn off the screen and lock it in my equipment bag.

We leave the CSA in a dark sedan registered to one of the agency’s cover organizations, and Nora directs us toward Acer’s vehicle. He is twenty minutes ahead of us, but a slowdown ahead traps him long enough for us to close the distance.

By six ten, we have him in sight. He leads us west for nearly an hour, then spends the evening drifting between a grocery store, a gas station, a pharmacy, and a diner. By nine fifteen, we have learned nothing except that he needs milk, batteries, disposable razors, and an unreasonable amount of time to eat alone.

At nine fifteen, he drives into a multilevel parking garage near a commuter rail station and gets out.

“This looks more promising,” Nora says over comms.

We shadow him between levels until he stops beside a row of commuter storage lockers. He opens number thirty-eight and places something inside before closing the door. Then he walks away without looking back.

“Transfer confirmed,” I say. “We’ll wait for the recipient.”

Ledger switches off his mic and asks, “How was the date?”

I let out a breath as I switch off mine, too. “Remember when you said, ‘Just because you make a detailed plan, doesn’t mean things will go according to it’? One of us probably should’ve knocked on wood.”

“That bad, huh?”

I nod. “I had planned to take her on a sunset cruise, where I would open up to her about how I’ve felt about her for years. Maybe even kiss her. It was the part of the date I’d thought through the most. And then we missed the boat.”

“It couldn’t have gone so bad if she’s asking to kiss you now.”

I smile, just thinking about her coming back out to my car after I had taken her home. It kind of changed how I looked back on the date. “Yeah. The date went well.”

At ten twenty, we’ve turned our mics back on, no one has approached the locker, and I’m forcing myself to stay focused instead of letting my mind wander to where it really wants to be—thinking about kissing Reese. How it felt when I had my hand on her cheek or our foreheads pressed together. Or how it felt when she came back and kissed my cheek. And how much I wish I was there with her, right now.

At eleven forty-four, a woman wearing medical scrubs enters the garage and walks directly to locker thirty-eight.

“Possible recipient,” I say.

She enters a six-digit code, and the lock releases. She pulls out a padded envelope, replaces it with a folded piece of paper, and leaves. We follow her, and forty minutes later, she pulls into a twenty-four-hour laundromat. She carries the envelope inside and walks past the six people in the building, placing the envelope inside an empty detergent box on top of a vending machine. Then she begins loading quarters into a washer as though she intends to remain.

We wait. At one twelve in the morning, a delivery driver enters the laundromat carrying a stack of restaurant menus. He leaves menus near the door, walks past the vending machine, and swaps the detergent box for another without breaking stride.

“He has the envelope,” I say.

The driver exits through the rear. We continue surveillance for another hour and a half as he makes two legitimate restaurant deliveries before stopping behind an office building and placing the padded envelope beneath the front passenger seat of an unlocked rental SUV. Then he leaves.

No one approaches the SUV. Not before three. Not before four. At four twenty-seven, Nora tells us to disengage. “A recovery team will take over,” she says. “You’ve been active for twelve hours, and we have enough to identify all three intermediaries.”

I glance at the rental SUV as we pass. The envelope went from Mercer to an emergency room nurse. Nurse to delivery driver. Driver to an empty vehicle waiting for someone else.

Each person knew exactly one step. Nothing before it. Nothing after it.

Ledger watches the SUV disappear behind us. “We know who built the network, and somehow we still can’t get anywhere near him.”

“That’s the point.”

Rooke doesn’t need every person in his operation to trust him. He needs each person to trust exactly one other person. One connection at a time.

I hate how much I understand his system.

My phone is still locked inside the equipment bag at my feet. There likely won’t be a message from Reese during the operation, especially since so much of it has been during the middle of the night. Still, the question waits in my head. Are you ever going to kiss me?

Yes. The answer has become the most certain thing about the night.

We return to the CSA shortly before five thirty as the sky begins to lighten. Emerson is already there. I’m beginning to suspect he sleeps beneath his desk and emerges whenever new data enters the building.