18. The Spy Who Stole My Heart
CHAPTER 18
THE SPY WHO STOLE MY HEART
LEDGER
I like sneaking around with Zoe . It’s actually pretty enjoyable when we have the same objectives and are working toward the same goal. It’s making me feel connected to her in a way that I haven’t felt for a long time. Probably because I’ve purposely stayed away from situations where I could, but it’s nice.
As we walk toward our car, Damjan says through our earpieces, “ If you two are going to sneak into Mona Liza’s hotel, I’ll stay here for a bit and keep an eye on her.”
I thank Damjan , then tap the back side of my button mic, which mutes me so that Zoe doesn’t have to hear me double as we drive. She does the same. Mona Liza’s hotel is only a seven-minute drive away. And since it is just across the street from ours, we park at our own hotel and leave the outlandish clothes we’d put on over ours in the car, along with the hats and sunglasses. Then we head across the street to Mona Liza’s hotel .
The hotel lobby is much bigger and more open than ours. It has high ceilings, ornate plaster work, vintage tiles, and classical sculptures along with more contemporary furniture. Not only does it have several restaurants on the ground floor, but it also has quite a few shops. Based on how many employees are manning the check-in desk alone, this place has enough rooms that we can’t exactly just try the key at several rooms to find the right one.
“ Okay ,” I say. “ I figure I can go up to one of the check-in clerks and convince them that we were just called in to fix an urgent computer issue and that we need to install some virus software ASAP . I can probably throw in that we got word of a credible threat to their network and have to act quickly.”
Zoe shakes her head. “ I’ll go up to an employee who speaks English and seems susceptible to charm. I’ll tell him that I’m Eliza’s assistant and that I’m supposed to go to her room to take her some headache medicine, but I forgot her room number and that she’s not answering her phone or responding to texts. I’ll show that she gave me her room key, and say that she’s probably not responding because she’s lying down. I’ll prey on his desire to help by saying that I really don’t want to get into trouble by not getting the medicine to her because she has an important meeting this afternoon.”
“ Or we can go with the computer virus idea,” I say. She’s not the only one with good ideas here.
Zoe glances toward the clerks and, without looking back at me, says, “ Act like you don’t know me.” And then she walks toward them.
Okay , we’re doing it her way. I amble over to a rack of sunglasses that’s sitting just outside a little shop next to registration and start trying some on, pretending to check how they look on me in the little mirror. I’m really just watching how things are going with Zoe , though.
She’s standing just outside of the check-in area but in full view of the six employees helping guests, looking like she’s typing something into her phone. Then she moves the phone from hand to hand like she’s impatiently waiting for a response, as she glances from the elevators in front of her to the doors behind her.
After a moment, she does something on her phone again before putting it up to her ear. My guess is that she’s eavesdropping on the employees checking in guests, listening for any of them to speak English . Maybe trying to judge which one seems more likely to bend rules. It’s impressive— it doesn’t look like she’s paying any attention to them at all.
She acts like she’s hanging up her phone, bites her lip, looks down at her watch, paces a little bit, and then pulls the keycard out of her purse as if she’s looking it over to see if there is a room number on it that she didn’t notice before.
She must’ve found a good target because she turns to look at the check-in desk like it suddenly occurred to her that they might be able to help. She goes right up to a man in his lower twenties with his dark hair in purposefully unruly curls. It’s obvious that he finds her attractive by the way his entire expression changes when he sees her coming to his check-in area. I wish I had thought to ask her to turn her mic back on so that I could hear their conversation.
They chat for a moment, clearly both flirting. They even laugh a bit. Zoe puts her hand on his arm a total of three times, and each time, I’m pretty sure the guy is so taken by her that he’s forgotten the name of the hotel. She has worked quite the spell on him, and he is appreciating every moment of it.
She holds up the keycard and glances in the direction of the elevators, looking worried. I don’t need to be able to hear what either of them is saying to know that the guy has bought in to everything she has said, and he is very invested in her plight.
This is why I can’t ever fall for Zoe again even though every part of me is so drawn to her. Not at all because she’s flirting with a guy to get information in order to do her job well. But because she’s so good at it that I can’t tell that she’s faking. Since she knows so much about reading body language, she knows exactly what to show to make everything seem authentic. No one looking at this exchange would think it is anything but genuine.
If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s all an act. And if I wouldn’t be able to tell that she was faking interest in a complete stranger, how could I ever tell if she’s faking interest in me?
It looks like Zoe is at the thanking-him-profusely stage, moving into the I -owe-you-a-drink-for-coming-to-my-rescue stage. Then she turns and heads in my direction, a big smile on her face.
I let Zoe get completely out of view of the employees at the check-in desk before I leave my sunglasses shopping to join up with her. As soon as I do, she says, “ Got it. Fifth floor.”
Before I even get a chance to respond, Damjan comes through our earpieces, saying, “ Eliza’s lunch date never showed, so she left and hopped into an Uber . I am following her. I thought she was heading back to the mansion, but it looks like she’s not— she’s heading to her hotel. You’ve got maybe two or three minutes to get in and get out.”
I turn my mic back on and say, “ Copy .” My eyes meet Zoe’s . It’s going to be tight to get up to the fifth floor, get to her room, go through her things, find a complete outfit that Eliza won’t miss, do a quick search for anything else we might need, and get back out. We pick up the pace as we head toward the elevators.
“ That’s not enough time,” Zoe says. “ We could probably get to Eliza’s room and find what we need, but chances are too great that we’d cross paths with her after while carrying an armful of her clothes. Unless you stay down here and distract her long enough for me to get clear.”
“ Agreed ,” I say, and stop walking. Getting caught by Eliza is a much worse outcome than not getting what we need from her room.
Just before Zoe reaches the elevators, though, there’s a little girl. She’s maybe five years old, hiding behind a potted fern, and she looks scared. Zoe immediately hesitates. Then she looks back at me, her eyes pleading for understanding .
Then she turns all of her focus to the little girl. I walk closer, needing to hear what Zoe says to her.
When I was eight years old, my siblings and I were hooked on a reality TV show about becoming a superhero, where the aspiring superheroes had to go through a bunch of challenges to show how worthy they were of the title. A challenge in a public area outdoors in the very first episode stood out to me more than all the others. One at a time, when summoned, each contestant had to find somewhere inconspicuous to change into their superhero costume. Then they had to run as fast as they could to get from there to the finish line. Whoever finished the challenge in true superhero fashion with the fastest time won.
What the contestants didn’t know was that there was a little girl placed near the finish line who was crying, saying she was lost, asking for help in finding her mom. Whether or not the would-be heroes stopped to help the little girl, thereby risking their fast finishing time, was the actual point of the challenge.
Maybe my siblings and I loved the show so much because we all wanted to be superheroes ourselves. Or maybe it was because we knew that our parents had both been intelligence operatives. I didn’t know at the time just how elite of operatives they had been, but I did know that my dad’s job title was Director of the Clandestine Services Agency and that my mom’s was Head of Counterintelligence at the CSA , so we grew up knowing there were real superheroes in the world.
But maybe it was because, at the time, it had only been three years since my little sister had been kidnapped. And so when I saw that little girl crying for her mom, I saw Charlie . Maybe we all saw Charlie . Maybe Charlie even saw herself there.
Regardless of what reason made us love the show, we were all obsessed. So , of course, we rooted for every superhero who stopped to help the little girl and compromised their ability to finish as quickly (risking elimination from the competition) by doing so.
And just like eight-year-old me rooted for those superheroes, I’m rooting for Zoe as she goes up to the little girl and crouches down to her height.
Zoe asks her what is wrong, and thankfully, the little girl speaks English . She says she lost her mom. So Zoe asks her what she and her mom were doing the last time she saw her before she realized she’d lost her. The little girl says that her mom was shopping for some earrings but that she stopped following her mom so she could look at some stuffed monkeys.
“ I’ll help you find her,” Zoe says. “ Do you want me to hold your hand, or carry you, or do you want to just walk beside me?”
I love that Zoe gives her a choice instead of choosing for her. The little girl thinks for a moment, and then says, “ Hold your hand.” Zoe takes the girl’s hand, and the two of them head off toward the shop most likely to have both earrings and stuffed animals.
This . This is why I’m falling for Zoe all over again. Maybe I never stopped falling for her. She may intimidate, track, engage, and neutralize bad guys, navigate danger zones fearlessly, and break into high-security installations with the best of them. She might also be difficult to trust and always thinks her way is best. But we’ve crossed paths a lot— enough for me to know that she will always look out for the underdog, the vulnerable, the forgotten, the overlooked.
I realize that I was wrong. Zoe isn’t willing to sacrifice anything for a mission. We may work for different agencies and we may compete in the field, but she has dedicated her life to the same thing I’ve dedicated mine to.
As I watch Zoe walk away with the little girl, I realize that I’m seeing Zoe differently than I used to. And maybe I’ve slowly been seeing her differently the whole time we’ve been on this mission.
In my earpiece, Damjan says, “ Mona Liza is heading into the hotel lobby right now. Are you guys out? If not, get out now.”
I suck in a breath. This lobby is huge, but that means she’s behind me. I suddenly remember that I’m still wearing my handlebar mustache. Without the crazy outfit, the hat, and the sunglasses, it’ll be an easy guess for her to figure out it was “ Tobias ” at that flower shop. Especially since I’m still wearing the t-shirt with the computer chip design and the dark gray pants.
I hurry to pull the mustache off, and as I’m shoving it into my pocket, Zoe comes walking out of the shop she’d taken the little girl into with a huge grin on her face. Of course, she’s still wearing the black wig. I give her a discrete head shake and she immediately pivots and heads back into the shop.
I turn to look at yet another carousel of sunglasses in front of a different shop— apparently, lots of people either forget or lose their sunglasses— and try to re-summon the accent, cadence, and inflections of Tobias’s voice.
About five seconds later, I hear Mona Liza say, “ Tobias !” I turn, surprise on my face, as she asks, “ Are you staying in this hotel, too?”
“ Eliza ,” I say as I take her hands in mine, just like Tobias Rennert would. “ So good to see you again! No , actually, I’m staying across the street, but I lost my sunglasses and heard there are some here, so I’m checking out the place.” I’m not wearing the blazer anymore— an outfit staple for Tobias in every video— but apparently Eliza doesn’t find that odd.
“ Oh ,” Eliza says, reaching a hand halfway up to my face before halting. “ You’ve got a bit of redness around your mouth. Is that an allergic reaction?”
My eyes close for a second as I realize it’s from pulling my mustache off so quickly. “ I don’t know if it was an allergic reaction or something else,” I lean in and cup a hand at the side of my mouth, whispering conspiratorially, “but I would maybe stay away from the grill here. And not just because of this. They also overcook their meat because they’re too busy bickering over who chooses the best music.” I feel bad throwing the grill under the bus since it was the manager at my hotel’s experience, not my own, but I do need to maintain my cover.
“ I’ll bear that in mind,” Mona Liza says. “ I do wish I could stay and chat, but I’ve got to dash up to my room to do some paperwork before heading back to Savovi?’s .” She gives me a look like she doesn’t really want to leave. “ See you at the auction?”
“ Of course,” I say, and she waves goodbye before hurrying toward the elevators. As soon as the elevator doors close, I let out a breath of relief, then head into the shop to find Zoe .