19. Secrets, Sweets, and Silhouettes
CHAPTER 19
SECRETS, SWEETS, AND SILHOUETTES
ZOE
I know I keep giving Ledger strange looks, but I am having the hardest time figuring him out. It’s something that doesn’t happen with many people. If at all. Back at Mona Liza’s hotel, right after I reunited the little girl with her mom, I started noticing a change in Ledger’s expressions. His face muscles are more relaxed, he’s tilted his head to the side a bit more than once, and his eyes— and pupils!— widen when he looks at me.
His expressions aren’t vastly different from what he used to flirt with Mona Liza so her attention would be off me during our private showing. But not once has he scratched his cheek with the back of his middle finger around me like he did around her. As he does anytime he’s not being entirely truthful.
And I don’t understand. Getting rid of a tell isn’t easy, and if you get rid of one, a new one usually pops up. Not showing a tell at all is possible— it just isn’t probable. Did Ledger really figure out how to stop showing tells just since we were last at the mansion? Or maybe I’m simply missing his new tell.
And maybe this is part of the reason why I love competing with Ledger so much— he’s not so easy to figure out. He’s like a coded message without a cipher. Every time I think I’ve cracked him, I find another layer. And this layer feels like decoding a transmission by using only half the alphabet.
After talking with Mona Liza at her hotel, he came into the little tourist shop to find me, and when he spotted me, his eyebrows went up and a smile spread across his face. It’s relatively easy to lie with your face. But people have micro-expressions that flash on their faces for a fraction of a second before they have a chance to school their face into what they want to show. Those micro-expressions are nearly impossible to fake. Ledger’s looked a lot like being elated to see me.
Yes , it could’ve just been relief that we hadn’t blown our cover, but it still did something to my heart. Why , Ledger , do you have to go making my heart want things it can’t have?
After we left the hotel, we went shopping for the clothes I’ll need to impersonate Eliza . We settled on a tailored charcoal-gray dress with an asymmetrical slit and a fitted bodice that seems to strike a balance between professional and artistic flare, like Eliza’s normal outfits. We also got a colorful scarf and bold, geometric earrings. The pieces we got aren’t as authentic as if we’d been able to secure an actual outfit of Eliza’s , but since we’ll be at a location where they expect Eliza to be, hopefully, it’ll be enough.
We got an early dinner while we were out. Through it all, Ledger and I bantered. Teased each other. Disagreed on several things. But the whole time, Ledger just kept looking at me differently.
Maybe we should go back to being enemies. Because this is feeling like friendship— and not just a surface friendship but the kind where you deeply care about the other person— and my heart can’t take it. Intelligence operatives don’t get this. We don’t get to care deeply about anyone. We wouldn’t even know how.
When we get back to our Broom Closet with a Dumpster View , Damjan stops by with the mask overlay that I’ll wear. We go through all the details of our mission tomorrow once again, making sure everything is in place. Today has been exhausting, and tomorrow will be, too, so Ledger insists that we have a bit of down time to relax. He thinks we’ll be more on top of our game tomorrow if tonight, we think about, talk about, or work on anything other than the mission.
I am about to argue all the reasons why the mission is all we should think about, talk about, or work on if we want to be successful tomorrow, but then he suggests that we relax with room service dessert and reads the menu out loud.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for Jaffa cakes.
I sit cross-legged on the bed, and Ledger stretches out on the bed facing me, lying on his side and propped up on one elbow, his krempita on the bed in front of him. He gets a fork full of the layered pastry filled with vanilla custard, and grinning, says, “ Hey . I finally got my pudding.”
“ It’s too bad it’s just the ‘white’ part of the black and white pudding you thought you were getting.”
Ledger moans a bit as he takes the bite. “ I wouldn’t say it’s ‘too bad.’ This is amazing.” I can feel his eyes on me as I slide my fork into the little sponge cake in my lap with orange jelly and a layer of chocolate and then take a bite. I haven’t had this particular dessert in probably two years, and it’s just as I remember it. Totally worth giving up a debate with Ledger over.
Ledger cuts another piece of his dessert, but only lifts the fork half way and looks at it, like studying it is more interesting than eating it. I can’t help but notice the muscles in the shoulder supporting his weight and then in the other shoulder as it flexes and moves. He is one very fit man, and looking at him makes me suddenly want to scale the side of a building with him. See who gets to the top first.
And also, I kind of want to reach out and run my fingertips along those shoulder muscles and down his arms. To skim my fingertips along his jaw, where stubble from a long day is just starting to appear. To tangle my fingers in his hair as we reenact that kiss from earlier. I reach up and play with my necklace as I picture it.
Zoe , what are you doing? You know you can’t fall for this man . Or any man, really. Intelligence operatives just can’t. I can’t. And I especially can’t fall for Ledger . I started to once before, and it sucked me in so fully that it actually made me lose sight of the mission for a moment.
Was it blissful for that moment? Absolutely . But , I knew that Ledger was just working the mission. I knew it the whole time. Still , though, it shook my heart more deeply than I care to admit. I don’t want to have to face that again.
His eyes cut to mine for a moment, and then he says, “ So , earlier today, you stopped our mission to help a little girl.”
“ I need to apologize for that. It won’t happen again.”
“ What made you do it?”
“ I …” I start, trying to figure out what I was thinking at the time. “ I guess I just saw myself in that little girl, and it reminded me how grateful I was for every bit of help I got along the way.”
“ Did you usually get the help you needed?” he asks, then eats a bite of his dessert, not taking his eyes off me.
I shrug and push my fork down into my Jaffa cakes. “ A lot of times. Just not always in ways that I wanted.” I can tell by the look in his eyes that he wants me to continue, so I do. “ Like , sometimes, what I really wanted was for a mom to wrap me in a hug and protect me and tell me everything was going to be okay, and what I got was a lot of experience in reading body language or learning how to listen closely which, as it turns out, helps with learning languages.
“ When you move around homes and have different guardians and different foster kids in the home, you don’t really get the chance to get used to someone enough to anticipate what they’re going to do. You have to watch for more universal body language in order to anticipate and act or react in the right way.”
“ Is that how you got to be so good at it?”
I take a bite of my dessert, looking up at the ceiling as I ponder my answer. “ It’s one of probably three reasons I’m good at it. So the first was necessity. If I hadn’t read body language while I was in foster care, I wouldn’t have known when to do an extra something nice for one of my guardians, when to just be quiet, keep my head down, and do chores or homework, and when it was best to just get out of there quickly. But really, I needed those skills in my original home, long before foster care. I might not have learned them, though, if I hadn’t had ample need for them.
“ Second ,” I raise my shoulders in a shrug, “ I’m just naturally gifted at it.” I’m not bragging. I didn’t earn it— it’s just part of me. “ I realized it was a talent when I tried over and over to teach foster siblings what I had learned. They had the same need for it that I did, but no matter how much I practiced with them and pointed things out, they never got as good at it as I did.
“ And the third thing is training. Once I realized I had a skill for it, I decided I should get as much training as possible. I wanted to master it. To be the best.”
Ledger grins at me. “ Of course, you wanted to be the best.”
“ Well , yeah,” I say. “ Did you think I didn’t start wanting that until we met? I take a bite of my dessert, reveling in the taste of chocolate and orange mixed. I’ve had packaged Jaffa cakes before, and they’re nowhere near the experience of having the real thing.
He chuckles. “ Not for a second.” He takes a bite of his dessert, too, then asks, “ So , the CIA trained you?”
“ Well , yes. But I was talking about college.”
“ Let me guess. Just like colleges send scouts to high schools to find students good at sports, a spy college sent out a scout to find high school students good at reading body language and offered you a scholarship.”
He’s chuckling, and I laugh, too. “ That would’ve been a much easier way. But no, I tend to do things the hard way. I grew up in Quicksand , Oregon , but the moment I turned eighteen and graduated from high school— which happened two weeks apart— I was out of there. I got a bunch of crappy jobs and lived in crappy apartments, starting out in Colorado and moving my way eastward. With each new place, I tried to become a new version of myself. A better version.”
“ Ahh . An emotional runner, I see.”
“ One of the best.”
“ I’d expect nothing less.”
“ So , one day, I’m working at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in northern Ohio with my awful boss, when he asks, ‘ Why aren’t you in college?’ in his deep, rattling voice. He said, ‘ You’re a smart girl. Someone in your situation can get into college and get a scholarship. Maybe even a grant. Do it. Don’t spend your life working in dung heaps like this.’
“ And , okay, he wasn’t so much awful a boss that day, because it hadn’t even occurred to me before that it was even remotely a possibility. But I looked into it, and I decided to go all in. To become a new person. A college person. My boss wasn’t wrong— I was a smart girl. And I’d always wanted to be an intelligence operative when I grew up. I just didn’t know how to get there.
“ Anyway , I had taken the SAT during my junior year of high school and had gotten a great score, so I applied and got a full scholarship to the University of Michigan , including housing and a food plan. It helped that my income was minuscule and as a foster kid, there were no parents’ incomes to consider when it came to scholarships and grants. The food plan only covered one meal a day, but I made it work.”
“ Let me guess: you put an extra apple, orange, or banana on your tray, then pocketed it for later.”
I nod. “ A carton of milk is a good one, too.”
“ And then Ziplocks for the squishier stuff so you won’t get your pockets dirty.”
I smile just picturing this man in college. “ And going to every club, lecture, and social event that promised food, even if you’re not interested in the topic.”
He nods. “ You got it down.”
“ Yeah , it was nice. It was the first time in my life when I could focus on improving myself, instead of just surviving.”
He’s giving me a look that’s baffling me. I’m not quite sure how to interpret it, which makes me as uncomfortable as the look does. So I barrel on. “ And I did really well in school.”
Ledger holds out a fist and says, “ Competitive natures for the win.”
I bump his fist but say, “ I bet school was easy for you. You just sailed right through it, even though you were focused on friends and fun, right? I had to work so freaking hard.”
“ Hey ,” Ledger says, a bit defensively, “ I might have made sure to squeeze in fun, but I worked hard, too. I have three older brothers who were already being all kinds of impressive and I have a twin who was actively trying to best me in everything. That piles on all kinds of pressure.”
Maybe I don’t give him enough credit. I kind of always assume that fun is the number one priority for him, but maybe it isn’t. Huh . Things just keep rearranging in my head to make room for new information about this intriguing man.
I am studying him, wondering how many other things about him I got wrong, when he says, “ Wait . The CIA doesn’t recruit from the University of Michigan . How did they find you?”
“ Oh ,” I say. “ I didn’t stay there. Toward the beginning of my sophomore year, my mom passed away. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in a lot of years, but I don’t know. It still hit me hard. Things got tough, and I thought about dropping out.” I give him a little smile. “ I guess the emotional runner in me activated. Luckily , I had an academic advisor who saw through the story I was telling her, saw the kinds of grades I was getting, and suggested that I change colleges instead of dropping out.
“ She helped me do everything to get accepted as a transfer student to the University of Virginia . I think that’s where I needed to be. Plus , it is a college the CIA recruits from. I thrived there, and it was life-changing for me. Especially when I took Nonverbal Communication and Body Language . My professor was a recruiter for the CIA , and I was his star student. He turned in my name, and the CIA approached me while I was still in college.”
Ledger smiles at me. “ And I’m guessing that being an intelligence operative has given the emotional runner in you exactly what you need. You can be a different person and run to different places, yet still come back home each time.”
I nod slowly, so impressed that he gets it. No one ever gets it. And the thing is, Ledger doesn’t only understand things that he’s experienced— I doubt he’s an emotional runner himself— he just seems to keep listening and asking questions until he understands. But the most amazing part is that I don’t feel judged by him for any of it. He just accepts me.
Maybe what made me fall for him before was exactly this— how well he listens. Even if I’m sharing something with deep emotions, he listens as if he cares about every single word. Like he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.
I know he’s an attentive listener who always seems to care, so I can’t believe I just told him a story that would showcase that side of him, putting me in danger of falling for him all over again. I had enough trouble trying to get over him last time.
This is why Ledger is the worst. Spies can’t fall in love. Ledger would never fall for me, and I can’t fall for him. Yet he just goes ahead and makes me want to. Like it’s nothing.
“ We’ve got an early day tomorrow,” Ledger says as he’s getting up off the bed, grabbing both of our plates and forks. “ We should probably sleep.”
I nod, and when he meets my eyes, I say, “ Thank you.” I don’t say what for, but he seems to understand.
We both get ready for bed, and I can tell by the way that he walks from the bathroom to the cot that his body is hurting again just thinking about sleeping on it, even though he’s trying to hide it. I grab my pillow from the bed and say, “ Don’t even think about taking the cot. It’s mine tonight.”
He takes my pillow and tosses it back onto the bed. “ You’re not sleeping on the cot. Take the bed, Zoe .”
Yep . He’s the worst. “ No , you took the cot last night and I had the bed. It’s only right to swap tonight. A guy your size should not be on that cot.”
Ledger puts his hands on his hips, elbows out. “ I am not taking the bed.”
I step close to him, mirroring his pose. “ Why .” It comes out more as a demand than a question.
He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “ Because there is no way I’ll be able to sleep at all if I know you’re on the cot.” I open my mouth to say something about it being cruel and unusual punishment to the cot to have him sleep on it two nights in a row, but before I can say anything, he adds, “ And I really need to sleep tonight if I want to be at the top of my game tomorrow.”
We are barely a foot apart in a silent standoff with both of our hands on our hips. I search his eyes as I try to think of the argument I can pose to get him to agree to take the bed, but all I see in them is pure resolve. A determination for me to not sleep on the cot.
Eventually , I realize he’s not going to give in no matter how solid my reasoning is, so I say, “ Fine . I won’t sleep on the cot. But neither are you. This is a big bed— no reason why that side of it should go unused while you break your back on the cot.” He doesn’t immediately shoot down the idea, so I’ve at least got him to pause and think about it. To help sell it, I add, “ We can roll up the blanket from the cot and put it down the middle as a barrier if you’d like.”
I keep my hands on my hips, standing at my full height, as he searches my face. I hope he sees the same level of resolve and determination in me that I see in him. That he understands his choice is either for me to take the cot or for both of us to take the bed.
After a bit, he says, “ Fine . But I’m taking the side closest to the door.”
Spoken like a true protector. “ Fine ,” I say back, and we both crawl into bed for what will likely be our final night in these cinderblock chic quarters.
Each of us turns off the light on our nightstands, and we both lie on our backs.
Sleeping in the same room as Ledger last night was one thing. We were in two separate beds at two very different heights. Ledger’s cot was near the foot of the bed, so I couldn’t even see him when I was lying down.
Sleeping — or trying to sleep— in the same bed as him tonight is something else entirely. It hits me that on the plane, we were probably as far apart from each other as we are now. But this feels different. I could reach out and easily touch him now. Especially because neither of us actually placed the rolled blanket barrier.
Even though I slept in the same room as Ledger last night, I still fell asleep relatively easily. But a lot has changed today. We kissed, even if it wasn’t for real, Ledger is looking at me differently, my feelings have been growing and changing all day, I opened up to him in a way I never open up to anyone, and I have come to know a side of Ledger that I didn’t know existed. Not in Moldova , not over the past year and a half of crossing paths with him.
I may be able to fall asleep virtually anywhere and anytime, but I can’t fall asleep on my back— I have to start out on my side. So I roll to my right side, just like I always do. Our one window doesn’t have great blinds, but it’s also not very big. It does let in just enough light that, now my eyes are adjusted to the dark, I can see the silhouette of Ledger .
He is so close. So touchably close. He only has the blanket pulled up to his mid-torso, so I can see the outline of his chest and shoulders. The soft rise and fall of his chest with every breath. The silver light from the moon as it catches his cheekbone.
I desperately want a life with this in it. I want to be near Ledger . I want to be the kind of woman who can fall fully and completely in love with him. Get married. Fall asleep every night next to the man she loves. Sleep in the same bed as him and actually reach out and touch him. And I want to be the kind of woman who deserves every bit of the love he has for her .
But I am not her. I wish I was because it is so painful right now to not be her.
Ledger turns his head toward me. “ Just so I know what to expect, I’d love to know— are you planning to stare at me all night?”
Of course, he felt my gaze on him. I shrug with the shoulder not pressed into the bed. “ Undecided . I might.”
“ You are not going to make this easy, are you?”
“ I don’t know how you do things,” I say, echoing his statement from our briefing meeting at the CSA but with much more of a teasing tone, “but I’m not in the business of making things easy.”
He lets out a soft growl, then rolls to his side, facing away from me. But good golly, his back is pretty great to look at, too.
His voice is quiet, but I’m pretty sure he mumbles, “ If you only knew how easily you can get under my skin.”
I smile, remembering what I said after he made a similar comment at that same meeting— I don’t know. It looks like I do a pretty good job . I guess I’d been right. I would claim this victory, revel in the fact that I can get under this man’s skin. If only I could be the kind of woman who is capable of it all.
You are not her , I hear echoing through my thoughts.
I don’t think this night is going to be easy for either of us.