Page 59 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

We join the procession down the basement stairs. Evelyn directs everyone through a reinforced door disguised as part of a paneled wall. The room beyond it is larger than I expected but somehow feels smaller the more people pour inside.

Calling it a safe room makes it sound sterile. It isn’t. It’s part emergency shelter, part family archive, and part storage area belonging to people who have never thrown away anything with sentimental value.

What I’m guessing is Rick’s old desk chair sits in one corner beside a battered wooden desk. Shelves line two walls, filled with plastic bins that are labeled things like Blake— Elementary School, Miles and Ledger— Sports, Charlie—Do Not Let Brothers Open, Christmas Village, Family Photos, Rick’s Things.

There are also old board games, baseball gloves, school projects, boxes of ornaments, a dollhouse, several pieces of camping equipment, and what looks like a papier-mâché volcano with one side caved in.

All of us arrange ourselves around the edges of the room, leaving Ledger and Zoe near the center.

I set down the cake on the desk with the other desserts and realize something. “I forgot the forks.”

“I remembered forks,” Miles says, holding them up. “But I didn’t think to grab the cake knife.”

I pull it from beneath the edge of the cake tray. “I remembered that.”

He smiles. “Look at us. Together, we make one fully functional party guest.”

The words hit me a little harder than I would’ve expected. He remembered the forks. I remembered the knife. Neither one of us had to remember everything. Teamwork. Maybe loving someone isn’t about arriving already able to do everything alone. Maybe it’s knowing which half of the tray the other person will reach for.

I could’ve had this realization a million different ways over the past five years. And I have it over utensils.

Once we’re all settled and standing in a rough circle, looking at Ledger and Zoe in the middle, Ledger glances around the room at the boxes, the old furniture, and the entire family squeezed between shelves of memories. “Well,” he says, “this is nothing like being above the trees in a forest strung with lights.”

Zoe’s eyes glisten a little as she looks around. “No, it’s better.”

His expression softens as he looks at her, his head tilting just a bit. “Better?”

“We’re surrounded by the history of the family I want to join.”

Evelyn presses her lips together, and Elizabeth openly wipes beneath one eye.

Zoe turns back to Ledger. He lowers himself onto one knee, looking like the motion hurts him as much as it did Miles. Zoe immediately gets down on one knee, too.

Ledger stares at her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m proposing.”

“I’m also proposing.”

Before either of them can say anything else, a deafening crack sounds somewhere outside, followed by a heavy thud that seems to shake the entire house. Then the power goes out, and darkness and silence fill the room.

Ledger’s voice comes from the center. “Are you kidding me?”

“Everyone, stay calm,” Evelyn says. “The generator will kick on any moment.”

A few seconds later, low emergency lights come on along the baseboards. The overhead lights flicker back to life, and everyone lets out a collective breath.

Then a pleasant female voice fills the room. “Warning. Exterior perimeter breach detected. Residence entering Level Three protective lockdown.”

Metal begins grinding somewhere overhead, and I grab Miles’s arm. “What is that?”

“The security shutters closing over the windows.”

“This house has security shutters?” A second heavy mechanical sound comes from the hall, and my eyes fly back to him.

“That was the reinforced interior door.”

Red lights begin flashing near the ceiling, and the house announces, “Multiple perimeter anomalies detected. Possible hostile movement on west grounds.”