20. Undercover Alarm Bells
CHAPTER 20
UNDERCOVER ALARM BELLS
LEDGER
I am dreaming. It’s sometime in the future because Zoe and I are married. Either we aren’t on missions right now or we both are on the same one, because in the dream, I am waking up with her in my arms. I know it’s not real, because we aren’t arguing and because Zoe herself said she isn’t the marrying type. She doesn’t believe that intelligence operatives even can get married. I don’t think that’s true at all, but maybe things are different for CIA operatives.
I want to stay in the dream for as long as I can because it feels so good to wake up with her in my arms. This dream just feels so real. Almost as if I can feel her head on my shoulder, her hair against my arm, her skin under my fingertips.
The dream starts to fade, and I reach for it, trying to pull it back. My own thoughts swirl in and out with the dream as I think of yesterday. I had been meandering on and off the path of falling for Zoe this whole mission. When she stopped to help the little girl yesterday instead of completing our objective, I felt like I’d stepped solidly on the path of falling for her.
Now , though, as I lie with her in my arms, I realize that I’ve fully fallen for her. All the way. Completely .
Much too soon, sleep starts to flee, and I’m being pulled from the dream world to the real world. But just like in my dream, I still feel her in my arms.
My eyes fly open, and I must jerk as they do because hers fly open at almost the same time. Our faces are only inches apart, her head on my shoulder, my arm around her.
We each let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a squeal, and we both jerk back, putting some space between us. Zoe is staring at me with her eyes wide, breathing heavy, a look of shock on her face that I’m sure mirrors my own. It takes a moment for our breathing to calm, our heart rates to slow, and for our recently asleep brains to register that there is no danger here, only awkwardness.
I guess I should be grateful that at least she didn’t reach for a weapon.
The awkwardness is fully present, though. I may have had some realizations, but I am not ready to voice those. Not when we have a mission to complete in just a couple of hours.
After a beat, Zoe says, “ So … we pretend this never ha ppened?”
“ Nothing happened,” I say, throwing the blanket off me. “ I’m going to get in the shower.”
I head into the bathroom quickly, mostly so that I can have a moment alone to process that dream and the feeling of waking up with Zoe in my arms. I’m not sure it helps, though, because ten minutes later, I finish showering and head back into our shared room, having figured out nothing more than I knew when I walked in. All I know is that I liked it. I like the thought of us being together. And that I’m quite possibly in love with Zoe . And by “quite possibly,” I mean “definitely.”
But also, I’m fairly certain it can’t happen.
As we move about the space, we are both eyeing each other, and I figure she’s trying to guess how I feel as much as I am trying to guess how she feels. Things have been changing while we’ve been here. I know we’ll need to talk about it at some point, but I don’t feel like I should push it yet because it might just make her run.
After talking with Zoe last night, it occurred to me that she might not have much experience with feeling loved. Maybe like with most new things, it’s hard at first. Or scary. Or , I don’t know, uncomfortable, I guess.
And maybe she’s not interested at all, but I get the sense that she is. And if she is interested in both me and a relationship— which are big ifs — she’ll likely want to move slowly. That’s okay. I realize that she’s the only woman I’ve truly been dreaming about ever since Moldova . I’m not going anywhere. I can wait as long as she needs.
We spend the early morning preparing for the mission. Zoe does a lot of practicing saying things in Mona Liza’s voice and British accent, trying to get it just right. Trying to get a voice right on your own is hard because your voice always sounds different to you than it does to the people around you. So usually, when I’m alone, I do a lot of recording my voice and playing it back until I get it right. But since I’ve spent a good amount of time with Eliza and Zoe can practice on me, the process goes so much more quickly.
Zoe applies the facial pieces that make her face the same shape as Eliza’s , and then she gets to work on the makeup. The selfie I took yesterday with Eliza is a big help in getting it right. Then Zoe practices Eliza’s walk until I swear that it’s actually Eliza in the room with me.
“ Okay , I think we’re ready,” I say as I put on the blazer that is the finishing touches of my Tobias Rennert outfit. “ Let’s go make history.”
We pack up the rest of our things because one way or another, we have to be done with this leg of our mission today. We grab our bags, and as we are about to head out the door, Zoe pauses and turns back to the room. “ Are you ready to leave our Fortress of Solitude on a Budget ?”
I chuckle and look at the space, too. “ Without a doubt. It’s amazing how much can happen in a room that feels like a secret agent’s fallout shelter.”
Damjan drives us to Savovi?’s mansion, drops me off out front, then drives Zoe around to the back employees’s entrance. He’ll go off to hide on a nearby street where he won’t be noticed and wait. He’s on comms with both me and Zoe , along with Packston and Kella , but I suspect it’ll mostly be Zoe , Damjan , and me doing any talking.
I knock on the front door, a bag holding my tablet over my shoulder, and Mila lets me in. She has been invaluable throughout this mission. We told her we needed to arrive at a time when there weren’t any last-minute private showings going on before the auction tomorrow since we’ll need to be in that room. She also let us know when Eliza would be in a meeting with Savovi? to discuss the final details for the auction. We can’t exactly have two Elizas running into each other.
Mila leads me to a small room toward the back of the mansion where I can hardline connect to their network and, with the help of Kella , who is remotely accessing the system, I tap into the security feeds so I can keep watch for anything not going according to plan.
I’m just getting connected when there’s a knock at the back door, and Mila says, “ That’s probably Shauna . Excuse me,” before leaving me alone.
Through my comms, I hear Mila open the back door, and Zoe says in Eliza’s voice, “ Sorry to have you come back to let me in, but I seem to have misplaced my security pass.”
“ Oh , it’s no problem. Would you like me to scan my badge to let you into the art gallery?”
“ You’re an absolute star. Thank you. You must feel like a doorman lately.”
“ You have no idea.” Then , in a whisper, I hear Mila say, “ You look and sound so much like Eliza !”
And I’m into the feed. I’ve got access to more than a dozen cameras, and I move the streams around so I can see the art gallery, the hallway leading to it, the hallways outside my room, the foyer, and the hallway leading to security. The security feeds don’t have audio, but I can hear Zoe through my comms.
Mila lets Zoe into the art gallery. When we approached Mila with this plan, she was actually excited about it, even if it does come with risks. Mila said that if things went poorly and she was questioned, she’d simply say that she thought it was the real Eliza asking for help. I have no doubt that she’ll be fine if that does happen, but I really hope nothing falls back on her at all and makes her job any more miserable until she leaves to go back to school.
Mila heads back up to the lobby, so my attention goes straight to Zoe in the gallery. Flynn , their Australian head of security, is already in the room. We figured someone from security would be in there— it just means that Zoe will have to be more convincing since it’s him.
“ Thought you were in a meeting with Mr . Savovi? ,” Flynn says.
Zoe’s walking around the room, stopping to inspect each piece of art. She gives him a glance as if she’s so focused on her work that she’s barely noticing him. “ He got an urgent call and asked for some privacy to take it. That gives me a free ten minutes, so I thought I’d quickly check that everything’s in order.”
Flynn seems to buy it. But then he says, “ Oi , weren’t you in that teal blouse with the paint swirls, cashmere shawl, and wide-legged trousers?”
“ I was , yes. Until I was grabbing a drink of water and Petra came around the corner and bumped right into me. Got soaked. Luckily , I had this spare outfit in my bag. But it’s not my favorite and I’ll be changing back the moment my other one’s dry.”
Nice on-the-fly explanation, Zoe . And she is nailing Eliza’s tone and cadence. I watch through the cameras in the room as she walks with Eliza’s gait and holds her body the same way Eliza does. Even though it can compromise a mission quickly, most operatives either miss little details like that, or they just don’t get them quite right. But not Zoe . She seems to catch every detail of every person’s body language and every detail about not only their voice and accent but down to their word choices and cadence.
Yep . She’s good at faking .
I ignore the voice and reframe the thought. She is a pro. And I have to admit that it is rather attractive. I get so lost admiring the master at work that I forget to check the other cameras until my periphery vision is drawn to movement on one of them.
The lobby camera shows Mila answering the front door again— this time, it looks like it’s the caterer, bringing something for tomorrow, I’m sure. Mila is leading her back in my direction where they go inside a room that’s not in my security feeds. After a moment, Mila and the woman head out of the room just as I can see that Zoe has walked over to the Trust sculpture.
“ Biscuit crumbs?” Zoe says with both disbelief and extreme disappointment in her voice. “ You must be having a laugh right now.” Flynn has barely had a chance to take a step away from the wall he’s standing by when Zoe lifts up the Trust piece and brushes the “crumbs” off the pedestal.
Just as we had planned, the alarm starts to blare, the room locks down, and three security personnel in other locations head toward the gallery just as Flynn shouts, “ Eliza ! What are you doing?”
From my vantage point through the security cameras, and I’m sure from Flynn’s perspective, Zoe is so smooth that there isn’t the slightest clue that she placed the tracker.
“ I’m sorting out an issue that shouldn’t have arisen in the first place,” Zoe says in Eliza’s British voice. “ Have your staff been letting people in here with food ?” She sounds equal parts disgusted and accusatory. She puts the Trust sculpture back in its spot on the pedestal. “ If you don’t want alarms going off, keep people with crumbs away from these.”
I am scouring the footage from the halls, especially toward the security room, and I see what has to be every member of the security team either heading toward the room or watching the exits. Flynn is making sure the piece is just how it should be and is giving instructions to his security team that has just poured into the room when I get a phone call from a very panicked Mila .
“ Tobias Rennert is here! The real Tobias Rennert .”
Oh , no.
“ When I was back in the kitchen with the caterer, Petra let him in. She said he wanted to see Eliza , so Petra messaged Eliza , and Eliza said she’ll be down from her meeting to greet him in two minutes!”
“ Delay that meeting,” I say, my voice as urgent as it can be without being loud enough to be heard outside the room.
“ How ?”
“ Distract him. Get him somewhere else so he’s not in the lobby when she comes down. She can’t see him until we are gone.”
“ Okay , um…” Mila says. “ Oh ! The bathrooms. The one by the library is all black from ceiling to floor. People always think it’s weird. I’ll show it to him like it’s an attraction.”
“ That’s perfect,” I say and end the call. Then through the comms, I say, “ Damjan , stand by for extraction. Zoe , we need to wrap this up ASAP .”
From the screens, I see that Zoe is heading toward the gallery door and I’m about to disconnect my tablet so we can make a quick exit, but then I see Eliza coming down the hallway toward my room. But before she makes it to me, she’ll reach the small hallway that Mila just took the real Tobias down. So I say, “ Hold that. Slight hiccup here— stay in the gallery if you can.”
Then I disconnect the tablet, shove it into my bag, and head out into the hallway.
“ Tobias !” Eliza says when she sees me, all smiles. “ What are you doing here? We didn’t have an appointment, did we?”
“ Eliza ,” I say as if I’m enchanted to be in her presence. “ No appointment— I was hoping I could see you and didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Are you possibly free to go get a drink?”
“ Oh , aren’t you just a charmer.” She reaches out and gives the lapel of my blazer a little tug, like maybe she’s thinking about yesterday when she saw me not wearing it and wants it off again. The woman has a bit of a cougar in her. Sure , the real Tobias is only six years younger than her, but I’m a full fifteen. Then she meets my eyes and I can see regret in them. “ As much as I’d love to, I can’t today— every moment’s already accounted for. But I’d love to sometime after the auction tomorrow.”
“ Of course,” I say then lift her hand and place a kiss on the back of it.
She lets out a sound that is suspiciously like a giggle. This military-esque woman just giggled. I really hope the real Tobias flirts with her, too.
“ I must dash and finish my meeting with Mr . Savovi? . It was lovely to see you.”
“ You , too,” I say, then watch her with what I hope is a look of longing, just in case she turns to look back at me. The moment she’s out of sight, I say into my comms, “ Okay , the coast is clear. Meet me by the back door.”
“ And I’m in the back lot now,” Damjan says.
I round the corner to the back hall just as Zoe is doing the same from the opposite end. We both get close to the door when we hear something and I spin to look behind me. Mila is coming around the corner, and she has the real Tobias with her.
I don’t catch more than a glimpse of him before Mila says, “ Oops ! Wrong way,” and turns to push him in the other direction. Then she pokes her head back around the corner, mouths Stay , and leads the real Tobias up to the lobby. I wish I could’ve gotten a full glimpse of Tobias — since pretending to be him, I feel an odd sort of kinship with the man.
I lead Zoe to an area in the hall with a weird bend that I noticed isn’t covered by the security cameras. “ Mission accomplished?” I ask.
Zoe grins and nods. “ We don’t set alarms off on purpose nearly enough.”
Mila rushes back into the hall and I wave her over to us and away from the cameras. “ So sorry— Flynn was the other direction, so I led Tobias the long way around. Now he is up front waiting for Eliza .” She grins. “ That’ll be fun when Eliza finds that the Tobias she’s been talking to isn’t the real Tobias . I thought of a great story to tell them about what might have happened.”
“ Oh , yeah?” I ask.
“ Da . Don’t worry. I’ve got this. Were you good? Did you win?”
“ We were,” Zoe says. “ You have been amazing, Mila .”
“ We couldn’t have done this without you,” I tell her. Because we really couldn’t have.
Mila is grinning, and she has a look on her face like she enjoyed being part of it. I don’t blame her. There’s a reason why I chose this job.
“ You’ve been accepted back into college,” Zoe says, “and the rest of your education is paid for.”
“ We just need your bank account number, and we’ll deposit the amount you’ve been making here until you graduate. Do you know your number?” She nods and says it out loud. “ Did you get that, Kella ?”
“ I did,” I hear her say through my comms .
I nod. “ Classes start in six weeks. Are you excited?”
She nods and then hugs us both. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to an asset hugging me, but it’s nice. It feels good that she loves this like I do.
Zoe smiles at her. “ We’ve got to run before Eliza or Flynn reappears. Thanks for everything— you saved us many times.”
Then we rush out of the building and into the back seat of the waiting car. Like the maniac driver that he is, Damjan takes off like the mission was a failure and everyone is after us.
“ You can relax,” Zoe says. “ We aren’t being chased.”
Damjan looks at us, confused, then lets off the gas a bit. “ Sorry — didn’t realize I was speeding.”
“ Congrats on a successful operation,” Kella says through our earpieces, but something is off in her voice.
“ What is it, Kella ?” I ask.
“ Well , it looks like we didn’t guess the right order that Aragundi’s team would steal the art pieces. We just got word that the Trust piece in Venice — the stained glass window— has been stolen.”
“ Oh , no,” Zoe says.
“ So that only leaves the one in Ankara ?”
“ Yes ,” Kella says. “ And we don’t know if the thieves-slash-bad-guys-vying-for-top-place-in-the-world-destruction-and-domination-game are going there or to Savovi?’s mansion next. We assume to the Trust piece you just placed the tracker on since the auction is in two days.”
Zoe meets my eyes, hers wide with concern. “ But if they are heading to Turkey next, we are going to have to get out of here quickly to get there first.”
“ You definitely will,” Paxton says in our comms, “because the chase is on. Unfortunately , there are no available flights direct to Ankara until tomorrow, but we did get you booked on a flight to Istanbul , and from there, we got you tickets on their high-speed train that will take you the rest of the way to Ankara .”
“ When does it leave?”
“ You need to be boarded in fifty-three minutes.”
“ See ?” Damjan says. “ I should’ve been speeding all along!”
I put one hand on the ceiling, just above the door, and Zoe does the same on her side. Then we link arms and hold on tight.