Chapter 2
Two
Everyone will be happy for us, Gorgeous.
Hours after John had made that claim, she twisted toward him in their sex-rumpled sheets. He was wrong. Her boss, her boss’s boss, and her flirty French ex would be decidedly unhappy that John Carroll Seymour was her fiancé.
John would be too, when he learned the truth.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
There had been so many chances for her to come clean before today. When his parents flew into town to meet her, or when he’d asked her to be his plus-one at his brother’s wedding. Way back in the beginning when he gave her a key to his apartment.
“Hey, John,” she could’ve—should’ve—said. “Since we’re stepping things up, let me be honest with you. I work for the CIA. Art brokerage is my cover. My real name’s Vivian Flint.”
But she hadn’t because… Well, there wasn’t one good reason why. Lots of little ones that added up to her being afraid he’d break up with her. Eventually she hoped if she kicked the can far enough down the road, he’d be hooked on her and stick around.
She ran her thumb over her ring’s shiny sapphire.
The responsible choice would’ve been to say she’d consider his proposal. But the prospect of a love- and laughter-filled life with John was too tempting. Yes had tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
“Hi.” He traced a circle on her shoulder. “I hear you thinking, Mrs. Seymour.”
She kissed his hand. “I’m keeping my name.”
Not Davis—Flint. Which he didn’t know yet.
She flipped back the covers. “It’s time for Ruckus’s walk.”
“I’ll take him.” As John stretched, the ripple of his body thrilled her. His job hanging hefty pieces of art kept him strong, but he loved good food, which kept his outer layer soft for comfortable cuddling.
“Don’t be silly.” Jane padded toward the dresser. “You’ve been on doggy duty since Wednesday, and I want to stretch my legs.”
With his arm tucked behind his head, he said, “I can help with that.”
“Not the kind of stretching I meant.” She tugged on her favorite yoga pants, a sports bra and a T-shirt. Heaven after two days in tailored business gear and four-inch heels. She’d love to chuck every pair of stilettos she owned straight into the mouth of hell.
Alas, they were what her alias required.
Through a yawn, he said, “I’ll wait up for you.”
“You’d better,” Jane called over her shoulder.
He would not. She could time a Swiss watch against John’s biometric clock. At 10:15 p.m., unless he’d taken a nap, it was lights out. She adored his reliability, especially when it worked to her benefit.
Vivian closed the bedroom door, then called, “Need a walk?”
Ruckus bolted from his bed and sat next to the door, tail thumping against the hardwoods. She zipped herself into John’s hoodie, then loaded its deep pockets with her keys, both her phones, a hot pink roll of dog waste bags and the flash drive she’d found in London.
She clipped the leash to Ruckus’s collar. “Lead the way.”
He tugged her into the night, then immediately slowed, sniffing every blade of grass along the stone wall dividing their quiet street from Holy Rood Cemetery. Technically, this neighborhood was Burleith, but the residents often referred to it as Georgetown.
As far as DC villages went, it was sleepy.
Her sneakers slapped against the sidewalk’s crisscrossed bricks. Comfortable, reliable, useful…this was her favorite footwear. The number of heels she’d sacrificed so she could make a hasty exit without breaking an ankle was shameful. Those Louboutins deserved better.
She plugged in her headphones and dialed her handler.
Compared to her personal cell phone, her meets-SCIF-standards work phone was a clunker.
Still, it was an improvement over the years when she was required to head into the office to brief him.
Seven miles didn’t seem like much, but in DC traffic, that translated to anywhere between fifteen minutes and an hour door-to-door.
MacColl picked up on the second ring. “Hope your shopping trip went well, Canvas.”
“Total success. I bought a palette knife.” In retrospect, she should’ve picked an easier code word than palette knife. It was a bitch to squeeze into conversation.
Ruckus paused to leave his mark on a hydrant.
“I expected your call four hours ago,” MacColl griped.
“Couldn’t isolate,” she said.
Protocol dictated she call to brief him if she could do so discreetly.
The airport was a nonstarter, as was the Metro, and the Lyft driver.
Too many ears. Once she was home, she couldn’t bail on John after he proposed.
Or right after the glorious post-yes sex, the fabulous meal, and more enthusiastic post-dinner sex.
Another reason she’d said yes—she and John were fire in the sack.
“Should’ve tried harder,” he said.
“Sorry, Boss. But I hope you had a good birthday.”
Never hurt to kiss ass when she was in the doghouse.
MacColl humphed. “How’d you remember it’s my birthday?”
“Special talent.” More like muscle she worked hard to develop since she was a kid, when she couldn’t rely on her ability to connect speech sounds to letters and words. Numbers, dates and art became her comfort.
“Your connection’s shitty. Sounds like you’re under water.”
She looked at her phone. “Full bars. Might be a solar flare?”
“Whatever. Give me the latest on ZR/MONFUN.”
The agency’s digraph cryptonyms were often petty, but this one was just plain boring. MONFUN was short for money funnel, and ZR classified this as a Staff D operation. Staff D handled intelligence intercepts and worked directly with the broader intelligence community.
Collaboration was a specialized skill, and she excelled at it.
Some CIA—MacColl included—struggled with trust. He came of age during the Cold War and never recovered from suspecting everyone had an ulterior motive.
She, however, was from a different era.
Trust had its benefits. She wasn’t naive—bad apples were out there.
But dozens of her classmates from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service now worked for DoD agencies.
So yeah, she’d go ahead and trust the NSA analyst who’d held her hair senior year when a half-dozen tequila shots caught up with her after the Diplomatic Ball.
“Canvas?” MacColl prompted.
“Here are the headlines. The painting Dilettante hired me to authenticate was legit.”
Dilettante was their code name for Jean-Michel de Gramont, her, blech, ex-boyfriend and former mentor. Five years ago, after establishing herself as an art broker, she’d cozied up to him to build her street cred in black market art circles.
After their breakup a year ago, she advocated for turning him over to the local authorities.
His money-laundering scheme had evolved into trafficking drugs via art.
But MacColl overrode her. In his opinion, letting Jean-Michel continue to build his list of criminal activities would make the case against him stronger and more likely to lead to a conviction.
“Which painting was it?” he asked.
“Boy Playing Trombone. It’s stenciled spray paint on plywood from a council estate in London.
The sales history shows a shell company bought it in 2018, kept it in a free port, and sold it back and forth to another shell company, bumping up its value.
Should fetch six million euros, give or take a half mil. ”
“Which shell companies?”
Ruckus led her to their usual destination—the Guy Mason Rec Center dog park. It was relatively deserted at night, and its walkways were well-lit.
“The seller’s a familiar player,” she said. “Gaizger Trading Company.”
“Dragomir Mihailovic is at it again, eh?”
“Got it in one, Boss.”
MacColl longed for his John le Carré days.
Back then, the game involved dark alleys and dead drops.
Now it was more spreadsheets and sanctions.
Through those spreadsheets, though, they’d caught Dragomir Mihailovic’s campaign contributions to pro-reunification politicians based in the Balkans.
Otherwise, the Goni? family underboss was a mystery.
Slippery. No photos had been uploaded to the DoD’s shared systems for a decade.
“When’s the auction tomorrow?”
“Nine a.m. GMT, 4:00 a.m. local.” She’d wake up to watch the livestream. “There’s more.”
“I’m listening.”
She searched the shadows. Nothing, and Ruckus was quiet. That was good enough for her to proceed with the briefing.
“Rocksy embedded a self-destruct device in the painting’s frame.”
“Does Dilettante know?”
“Doubtful. He loathes unpredictability.”
MacColl sighed. “Does this stunt put you at risk?”
“No. Heightened emotions could work to our advantage. Angry people get sloppy.”
“Agreed. We’ll wait and watch. Anything else?”
“Yes, but it’s personal.”
Her heart kicked into overdrive. She’d been in tight squeezes and dangerous situations with barely a blip in blood pressure, but the idea of uttering this next sentence made her knees wobble.
It would trigger a chain of events that would end with revealing her true identity to John.
They’d either achieve a beautiful new relationship phase or break up. She didn’t see an in-between.
“Canvas?”
“Brawn asked me to marry him.”
Seconds felt like hours as her butterflies morphed into hornets. She never rocked the boat at work, had always followed orders without hesitation. Even as a little girl, she’d hated being a problem because it made her the center of unwelcome attention.
But John was worth it.
Finally, MacColl humphed. “If you said yes, you need to bring him in for a polygraph.”
Her engagement ring gleamed in the park’s overhead LED lights. Relief flowed through her. In more fraught times, MacColl might’ve told her to break it off.
“Then I need to bring him in.”
“Tomorrow,” MacColl said. “If he passes the poly, the wedding needs to happen fast.”
Standard. Marriage brought legal protections that engagements did not.
“Roger that. One last thing, Boss. In addition to the self-destruct device, I found a thumbnail-sized flash drive.”
“Christ, Canvas. You should’ve started there.”
She ignored his irritation. “It’s encrypted. Given the duty of care from warehouse to auction house, the drive could’ve come from anywhere. I’m leaving it at our usual place.”
On cue, Ruckus squatted on a wedge of green grass next to the dog park’s paved trail.
She ignored the bag dispenser attached to Ruckus’s leash.
Instead, she ripped a hot pink bag from the roll in her pocket and stashed the drive, which she’d then shove into the bag she used to clean up after Ruckus.
Then she’d dead drop everything in the park’s waste station.
“Don’t,” MacColl said. “Bring it tomorrow instead.”
Maybe this was a sign MacColl was finally starting to trust her capabilities. She pocketed the pink biodegradable plastic, then picked up after Ruckus with the normal green bag.
“Will do, sir.”
He ended the call.
Sigh. Just once, it would be nice for him to say nice work. She’d heard his whole your paycheck is your reward for a job well done speech, but a pat on the back—even better, a promotion—went a long way.
At least he’d been decent about the proposal.
The overachiever in her laughed into the dark.
He wanted fast? She’d show him fast.
At home, as predicted, John was sawing logs. He slept in the ready soldier position, flat on his back, arms straight by his sides, ready to spring into action. Ironic considering she was actually the one who took middle-of-the-night calls from parts unknown.
“John?” She nudged his shoulder. “Wake up. I need to ask you something. John?”
“What? Who?” He bolted upright like Nosferatu disturbed before sunset. Unless sunrise or Ruckus’s snuffling woke him, he greeted sudden consciousness with startled suspicion.
“Do you have any important meetings next week?” she asked.
“That’s why you woke me?” He slapped at his bedside lamp, then grabbed his water to clear his groggy throat. “Jesus, Jane. Next week? No, there’s nothing I can’t move.”
She straddled him. “Let’s elope. Tomorrow.”
John coughed on the water. “Why?”
“Because we can.” She was telling the truth…
but not all of it. “To Copenhagen. The weather’s beautiful this time of year, the days are twenty hours long, and I have a boatload of points burning a hole in my pocket.
Denmark’s like the Vegas of Europe. Same-day licenses, and we don’t need any special visas. ”
“You want to…” He rubbed his beard. “Go? To another country? Tomorrow?”
The agency preferred quick nuptials, true, but she also wanted to seal this deal fast. Otherwise she’d torture herself with legitimate reasons they shouldn’t marry. Her subterfuge, his tense relationship with his parents, his unwillingness to travel.
But mostly her subterfuge.
“I promise we’ll do a performance wedding too. But work’s bananas, and I hate the idea of delaying because of logistics. I want to be married to you, John. Not in a year or two, but now. Your passport’s valid, right? So there’s no reason we couldn’t—”
He cupped her face with his big rough hands and ran his thumb along her cheek. “Let’s do it. Let’s elope to Copenhagen and figure out the rest later.”