Page 73 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

There’s something about my life you deserve to know.

That sounds like I’m about to disclose either a terminal illness or a second family.

I work for⁠—

I stop myself. Abraham was right. If I rehearse this until every word is perfect, it’ll sound like a performance.

I gather the garment bag and hard-sided disguise case from the back seat of my car, which is back to having my own plates on it instead of the clean plates and registration assigned to Maxwell Shaw, and get out. I open the door into the house and step inside.

Then I stop.

There is a chair in the middle of my living room.

A desk lamp on the side table is angled directly at it, illuminating the seat with the kind of harsh intensity usually reserved for interrogations and community theater productions. Reese is sitting on my couch in black pants and a black turtleneck. She’s wearing her tortoiseshell-framed glasses that aren’t too dissimilar from the ones I was just wearing. And she has a mustache. Not a subtle one, either. A large, dark one that is peeling slightly at the left corner.

There’s a notebook open on her lap, and I can see that at the top of the page, in large block letters, she has written, OPERATION: EXPLAIN YOURSELF.

This is not one of the twenty-seven versions I rehearsed.

“Reese.”

“Agent Lancaster.”

My heart stops.

“I didn’t see your car,” I say, finally closing the door behind me. She has the code to my garage, so it isn’t exactly alarming to see her here. Usually, though, I get a heads-up.

“It’s called being covert.”

“Why are you wearing a mustache?”

“I thought it might help you feel comfortable.”

“I don’t think it’s working.”

“You haven’t sat in the interrogation chair yet.”

I set the garment bag and disguise case beside the door, trying to assess the situation. The costume and lamp are reassuring. I don’t think Reese would create a themed interrogation room for someone she intended to remove permanently from her life.

But she called me Agent Lancaster. That is considerably less reassuring. “Can I sit somewhere that isn’t being illuminated like I’m about to confess to a murder?”

“You can sit wherever your conscience allows.”

The corner of my mouth almost lifts. This is Reese. She’s still joking. That doesn’t mean she isn’t hurt. In fact, with Reese, it may mean the opposite. I cross the room and sit beside her on the couch, angled toward her, instead of taking the interrogation chair.

She watches me carefully. Her pen is poised above the notebook.

Whatever she knows, I still need to tell her the truth. I lean forward, rest my forearms on my thighs, and take a breath. “Reese, there’s something about my job that I’ve wanted⁠—”

“So.” She clicks her pen. “How long have you been a spy?”

Every prepared word disappears. My eyes are on hers, and she meets my gaze steadily, but the fingers holding her pen are moving. Tapping once against the notebook. Then again.

“How did you know?”

“My purse is in your trunk.”

I blink. “That doesn’t answer my question.”