3. License to Spy
CHAPTER 3
LICENSE TO SPY
OLLIE
A s I sit in my regular seat at the Coffee Loft , sipping my spiced chai and stealing glances at Daisy , I keep trying to read the book that’s open in my hand, but all I can think about is how much I wish I’d been brave enough last night to ask Daisy out. There was a moment when the perfect opportunity presented itself, and I locked up like a spreadsheet with too many formulas.
I run a hand over my face. How in the world do people manage to ever get married when asking someone out for a first date is so nerve-wracking?
You’ve asked people out before , I remind myself. True . So I can do it. Maybe the key is to not ask someone who’s out of my league. Or who seems perfect in every way. Someone who I’m pretty sure could be “the one.”
I’m trying to focus on the page—the same page I’ve been on since I first sat down—when there’s movement directly in front of me. I look up to see someone take a seat at my little table, right across from me, which is weird, because there are several other open tables. Then , my eyebrows shoot up as I realize that I recognize the man. “ Jace Lancaster ? Is that you?”
“ Hi , Ollie . It’s great to see you again. It’s been a while.”
I nod. “ Since the end of my sophomore year of high school, I think I’ve only seen you once or twice.”
Jace smiles. “ The good old days of AP Calculus . You were two grades younger than me, yet you were still better at it than I was. Didn’t you have to get special permission to be in that class as a sophomore?”
“ I did. Numbers and I have always gotten along very well, so it wasn’t hard to get. Do you live around here?”
“ In Cloakwood , actually. But my mom, my brother, Blake , and my sister, Charlie still live here in Cipher Springs .”
I didn’t know Blake at all. There was maybe another brother in there who I also didn’t know. “ I do see Charlie around town now and then.” She was a year younger than me. He also has twin brothers who were a year older than me. I didn’t know any of Jace’s siblings as well as I knew him, though.
I always looked up to Jace . And not because he was two years older than me, or seemed so self-assured, or was good at so many things. Well , okay, it was also those things. But I looked up to him because he was a genuinely good guy. A natural leader. Someone who was cool without ever acting like he knew he was cool. It seemed effortless to him. Even though he was so much cooler than almost everyone else, he never made anyone feel less than him. As the guy who wasn’t cool, I saw how rare that trait in high schoolers was.
He wasn’t all muscles the way his brother, Ledger , was. In fact, I remember him being kind of lanky. People were attracted to him because of his personality, but he wasn’t particularly good-looking in high school. Kind of average, I guess. Now , though, he seems as cool on the outside as he was on the inside back in school.
“ I’m here because I could use your help.”
I sit up straighter. “ Like with calculus?” I’m only kidding, and it does make Jace chuckle. But honestly, I can’t think of anything other than calculus that he would come to me for help with.
“ Kind of like calculus. But more like accounting.”
“ Do you need me to do your taxes?”
This time, I got a better laugh out of him even though I hadn’t been kidding. “ No , no taxes. Actually , it has to do with one of the clients of Pacioli and Blackwell .”
My brow crinkles in confusion.
“ I work for a U.S . intelligence agency.”
My eyes widen. “ You’re a spy?” I say, and suddenly realize that I’ve said it too loudly. I glance around—there isn’t anyone sitting very close to us, and no one seems to react to what I said, so I breathe in relief. Then I say in a much quieter voice, “ You’re a spy?”
“ Intelligence operative.”
“ For which agency?”
“ That’s classified.”
“ It’s a secret spy agency?”
Jace flinches, but he nods. I lean back in my chair. I remember thinking in high school that the guy couldn’t get any cooler. But he went off and did. He’s a spy— intelligence operative —for a clandestine agency. I don’t think it’s possible to get any cooler than that.
“ What do you need my help with?”
“ I need you to be the spy.”
I jerk forward in my seat, leaning into the table, and hiss, “ You want me to be a spy?”
He nods. “ I’ll need to read you in on a few details to explain your mission, and I need to know that you’ll keep it quiet.”
I nod, but I’m not even sure I heard his words correctly. My head is swirling at the knowledge that he wants me to be a spy.
“ There is a company that has a lot of their accounting done through Pacioli and Blackwell . For what you need to know, the name of the company doesn’t matter, but they are using their company to launder money that they then are using to fund a foreign terrorist group that is targeting the U.S . We think that one of the accountants at your firm is knowingly helping them to cook their books.”
I suck in a breath, and my mind starts running through all the people I work with, assessing whether or not I think they could possibly be willing to do illegal accounting practices. “ Do you know who the accountant is?”
Jace nods. “ You work with him—his name is Tad Riggins .”
“ Tad ? Tad ? But he’s not even that good at his job!” Although I would say that helping his client do illegal things to help a terrorist organization arguably makes him so much worse at it than I thought.
“ Maybe not, but he’s good enough to have hidden a lot of money in the past several months.”
Daisy has come out from behind the counter with a cloth and a spray bottle and is wiping off tables. When she gets close enough to overhear, Jace switches from talking about espionage to reminiscing about high school so seamlessly that it leaves my head spinning. Daisy is looking at us curiously. Maybe she saw some of the expressions that must’ve crossed my face in this conversation with Jace and is wondering if everything is okay. I give her a smile that I hope tells her that everything is great.
As soon as she heads back behind the counter, Jace picks up right where he left off .
“ I posed as a client and met with Tad a few days ago in your building. I planted a bug in both the conference rooms you use to meet with clients, hoping that we could get some information from their meetings that will provide a missing puzzle piece in a very large puzzle. There are details that we need, and we believe that we’ll get those details during a meeting between Tad and the client.
“ And then I waited. Yesterday , he met with his client, but we didn’t pick up anything from the bug. I used thermal imaging to track the client once she entered your building, and I believe that she had her meeting with Tad inside the records room on your floor. Probably for secrecy. Your access badge will get you into that room, correct? I need you to plant a listening device there.”
When I woke up this morning, I knew exactly how every part of my day would go. It would go in exactly the way I planned it. Down to the minute. I did not expect to run into an old friend from high school, find out he’s working as an intelligence operative for a secret spy agency, and then be asked to plant a bug in the records room at my work. And it’s not even nine a.m.! This cannot be happening. I’m not the kind of guy who does spy-ish things.
“ Okay , wait,” I say. “ If you’re just needing information about the client’s accounts, there are legal channels to get that information. Like the SEC or the IRS . Or even the FBI or the Department of Justice . Why do you need me?”
“ A lot of times, going the normal routes to get information is the right way. And if it was a US citizen helping a US entity, we likely would use one of those routes. But the company Tad Riggins is helping is funding a foreign entity—a hostile one, at that—which is why my agency is involved. And if we go through the normal channels, it will alert the terrorist group the client is funding and cause them to go to ground. We need to find them. And the only way to do that is to get the information we need without tipping them off.”
“ Okay ,” I say, nodding, “that makes sense. But why me ?”
“ Because I know you’re trustworthy. And I know that your nature is to be helpful— I learned by taking a class with you that was very difficult for most of us how quick you are to offer help. Plus , you know me, and I hope you trust me, too. And you’re in the best position to act without suspicion.”
I run my hands over my face. Jace wants me to be a spy? That’s the kind of thing that people like Jason Bourne do. Not people like me. Not people who never step out of line because they don’t want their boss to have a reason to reprimand them. And now he wants me to do something that I am sure goes against Pacioli & Blackwell policies. Something that I definitely could get caught doing. If I get caught, it won’t only be my boss who will be censuring me. It’ll be my boss’s boss, too. Maybe even Pacioli & Blackwell themselves.
“ I don’t know. It feels pretty dangerous.”
“ It’s natural to be concerned,” Jace says. “ But we don’t believe that Tad Riggins is a dangerous criminal, and we don’t think the client he meets with is, either. The organization that this company is funding isn’t located here. You’re not in danger from them.”
I hadn’t even thought to be worried about the danger coming from the bad guys! I could be angering international terrorists. Local bad guys. I start to breathe a lot faster. I swear my vision is pulsing like it has a heartbeat. “ Jace , I don’t know that I can do this.”
“ Just … don’t say no yet,” Jace says. He pulls something out of a pocket and puts it on the table. It’s small—only about the size of the fingernail on my pinky and about as thick as a dime. “ This is the listening device. It has a backing on it right here—if you pull it off, it can be stuck to almost any surface, like a sticker. “ Are you willing to simply take this with you today, and if you see an opportunity arise to place it, think about taking that opportunity?”
I stare down at the bug. It’s so much smaller than I thought it would be. It’s kind of crazy that something so small can make me so nervous.
I’m still staring at it when Jace says, “ So , you like the barista, huh?”
My eyes flash to his .
“ Daisy , right?”
“ What ? I never said I did.” My eyes immediately find Daisy to make sure she wasn’t close enough to hear.
“ Ollie , I’m an intelligence operative. We’re trained to read people. I could tell you liked her before I even came over to your table by the way you were stealing glances at her. And that was before she walked closer to wipe off the tables and I could see your heart rate pick up in the vein in your neck.”
My hand immediately goes to my neck. “ Okay , but do you blame me? She is perfect in every way.”
“ Have you asked her out yet?”
I pause and then shake my head. I don’t feel like I could ever have enough to offer her.
Jace waits until I meet his eyes. Then he says, “ Take a leap, Ollie . Be brave.”
He’s asking for so much bravery! My eyes drift to Daisy , who’s standing behind the counter, making a lofty-sized coffee for a customer as she chats with them. If I can’t even ask out the woman I’ve been pining over for the past year and a half, how does he expect me to be a spy for him?
My eyes go back to Jace’s as the beep-beep sounds on my phone to leave for work. What I see on his face is confidence. But not a general confidence, like the guy always has, but a specific confidence in me .
It’s misplaced confidence, of course, but it’s still somehow enough to make me grab the listening device and push it into the pocket of my slacks. “ I’ll see if I can find an opportunity. No guarantees.”
“ That’s all I ask,” Jace says.
We both stand and he shakes my hand as Daisy calls out, “ Bye , Ollie !”
Then I turn and head out the doors. I’ve been trying to convince myself I’m ready for a job in risk management, but between carrying this device in my pocket that feels like a ticking time bomb, the request for me to be an actual spy, and my inability to ask Daisy out, I’m starting to wonder if I even know how to manage my own risks.