Chapter 5
Friday, 7:20 a.m., Greene household
T he kids got on the bus at 7:27 a.m., give or take ten minutes. Valentina was picking her up at seven forty-five sharp, which gave her eighteen minutes to transform into a CIA agent. She shoved lunch boxes into their hands. “Kyle, remember that Sienna’s mom is picking you up from horseback riding today.”
“Why?” Kyle flashed her a bored teenage look. “What are you doing?”
“Remember that job I mentioned last night?”
Kyle looked skeptical. “You were serious about that?”
“Yep. Starting today I’m a…” She realized that she had no clue what she was supposed to tell people.
Luckily Kyle wasn’t worried. “Gotta go. Love you, Mom!”
As soon as the bus folded in its stop sign, Gabby ran for her room. It was go time. When she’d resurrected pants from her travel agency days, she’d proved Sloane Ellis right—her yoga pants had been lying to her. Her best black pants from 2010 would not be returning from the dead. This left her with a choice: 1) yoga pants or 2) a wrap dress she had worn to Becky Buckholz’s baby shower last year. With no time to spare, she went for her Becky wrap—a dress meant she didn’t have to pick a shirt.
In the end, she was waiting for Valentina in her foyer dressed in the exact outfit she’d worn to Becky’s baby shower: a lavender dress with pantyhose, Mary Janes, and a crocheted cardigan. She had pulled her hair into a French twist and secured it with a brown bitey clip. The only accessory she was missing was a pastel gift bag with a breast pump and diapers inside.
Valentina pulled up dressed in all black, in a black Dodge Charger, with her wavy hair freshly blown out and a bold red lip. Gabby was living inside a joke: “A Bond girl and your mom walk into a bar…”
She sat down and pulled the wrap together over her boobs because it kept falling open, and not in a sexy way, more in a “Mom, cover up your boobs!” way. Always cordial, Gabby said, “Thanks so much for picking me up.”
“I had to. The building’s location is classified.”
“Any chance we can run through a Starbucks? I didn’t have a chance to make coffee.” Finding pantyhose took up all of her time. She had even used clear nail polish to fix a run, like she was her granny. She knew pantyhose were out, but the CIA seemed formal. Would Valerie Plame wear pantyhose? Gabby guessed yes. The only thing she knew for sure was that she could really use a coffee.
“There’s coffee at the office.”
As Valentina swerved through LA traffic like a NASCAR driver, Gabby clutched the armrest. Valentina headed down the 134 to the 5 toward Echo Park. Last time Gabby had been in this neighborhood, she’d gotten a cupcake at Ms. Em’s. So that was one bonus of working for the CIA—cupcakes. Red velvet was her favorite. Instead of heading for the trendy spots, Valentina veered toward Glendale. The Glendale Mall hadn’t been cool for a very long time, but there had been one store Gabby loved…
International Rug had been a knockoff Pier 1 chock-full of Mexican sodas, colorful dried noodles, bamboo chairs, and all of the best rugs. Basically, it sold ambiance. Before she could finish walking down memory lane with an imaginary pineapple Jarritos soda, Valentina pulled into the parking lot of the store itself.
Gabby gave her a questioning look. “International Rug?”
“Used to be. When it went out of business, the CIA scooped it up. It’s a perfect facility—no windows and lots of space for training. The government has been repurposing as many abandoned big-box stores as possible.”
“For real, this is the CIA?” Gabby had bought a papasan chair here, not to mention some vaguely tribal masks that Phil had objected to. She had meant to come back for a hammock when they were going out of business, but Kyle got the flu that week.
“Well… we are a specialized division of the CIA, an off-the-books division. We’re officially called the EOD, for the Elite Operatives Department.”
Gabby blurted out a shocked laugh. She wasn’t going to be a regular CIA agent; she was going to be an elite one. Her stomach tightened at the thought.
“Most people on the inside call us International Rug.” She looked at Gabby with a flat expression. “It’s a joke, an inside one.”
“I got that.” Gabby smiled back, mostly tickled that she’d found something Valentina wasn’t good at. The woman wouldn’t make it as a stand-up.
“Is there any merchandise left?” Maybe she got a job and there would be a stockpile of lingonberry pancake mix.
Valentina told her to shut up with one stern look.
The businesses nearby were also closed, except for a Thai take-out place that Gabby would definitely be trying and a Total Wine at the end of the block. The only thing keeping those businesses alive must be Instacart and Grubhub. There was no foot traffic in this neighborhood anymore.
The outside of the building hadn’t changed. It had always been plain concrete. The cheerful red sign for International Rug still hung on the front, the final “g” dangling at an angle.
“Why didn’t they call it International Rugs? That would have made more sense,” Gabby wondered aloud.
Matter-of-factly, Valentina said, “It was run by a faction of the Russian mob. Oleg, the guy who started it, wasn’t super great at English.
“When the EOD took down his business, we confiscated his assets, including this building.”
Gabby’s jaw dropped imagining herself pushing a stroller down the aisles with zero clue she was at a mob business. And now she was working here.
Valentina explained, “The higher-ups just decided to go with the abandoned look. It’s working so far. No one seems to notice us.”
Gabby had once heard that the best spies could be easily overlooked—average height, average weight, plain clothes. Valentina applied a coat of gloss to her lips with one hand on the steering wheel. Gabby had never seen anyone less average than Valentina. That might not be a criterion.
Valentina pulled into a parking garage, at which point things became much more than average. There was a series of biometric screenings to get into the building. Gabby remembered all the movies where someone killed a man and stole his eyeballs or a finger to gain access to a place like this. And now she, Gabby Greene, was working here, a place where her eyeballs might be stolen.
Even she had to admit that the risk of stolen eyeballs seemed pretty low. More of a Hollywood trick than a real strategy. With the soul gone, the eyes were windows to nothing, just balls of jelly. Last year, Gabby saw her grandfather die. In life, he’d been the sweet to her grandma’s spicy. When Gabby was a child, he would sneak treats to the kids before dinner when her grandma wasn’t watching. With soft brown eyes, crinkled at the edges from smiling, he’d always looked like he was about to tell a quiet joke, the kind you might miss if you weren’t listening.
“I’ll send you down to security later so that you can get in and out of the building.”
The inside of what used to be International Rug looked like a Best Buy these days, a windowless room filled with screens and gadgets. Thankfully, there were still some rugs. Intricately patterned Persian rugs gave the EOD a much-needed pop of color, and Gabby could still detect a hint of eucalyptus in the air.
Agent Strong was waiting for them in what used to be the candle section, looking stern, her hair freshly buzzed.
“Morning, Ms. Greene. I’m glad you made it.”
“If you’d told me you were at International Rug, I could have driven myself. I loved this store!”
Agent Strong gave her a perfunctory head nod and said, “I’m glad you like the office,” which wasn’t what Gabby had said at all. She had much preferred International Rug the import store to International Rug the off-the-books CIA office.
Agent Strong ushered her into the briefing room, which was 180-degrees opposite of her kitchen. No dishes or piles of paper, no kids’ backpacks. “The room has been cleared.”
“Of what?”
“Bugs. We can never be too careful.”
Gabby tried to wrap her head around that and couldn’t. Were there counterspies in the EOD?
“Thank you for coming in, Ms. Greene. Time is of the essence in this mission. It is essential that we get you up to speed ASAP.”
“I’m still trying to figure out what is happening. What was Darcy doing?” Gabby asked.
“Agent Dagger.” Alice emphasized her title in a way that made Gabby’s breathing constrict. She would feel more comfortable if they could just call Agent Dagger by her first name. She could replace a Darcy, not an Agent Dagger, though.
“Agent Dagger,” Alice continued, “was working undercover as Camille Walker, the personal assistant to the CEO of eStocks Enterprises. That is the role you will be taking over.”
Personal assistant—Gabby had that covered at least. She’d been an assistant to so many different men, including Phil. She could do that job in her sleep.
“The CEO, George Kramer, is a puppet for the Russian mob boss Sergei Orlov. Any questions so far?”
She had nothing but questions. Agent Strong might as well have been explaining calculus, but Gabby answered, “Nope. I got it.” She would rather do anything than disappoint Alice. Disappointing people was her nightmare.
Alice pulled out pictures of Sergei Orlov and George Kramer and slid them across the desk for Gabby. “We need evidence proving that Kramer is Orlov’s puppet.”
“What kind of evidence?” Gabby congratulated herself on asking a logical question.
“Agent Dagger managed to send us a string of invoices from shell companies that linked Orlov to dummy services, lots of payments for nothing. The invoices were all labeled ‘services rendered’ when nothing was actually done.”
“He sounds like my ex-husband.” Phil cost a lot and didn’t offer anything in return.
Alice ignored her. “eStocks’ expenses are through the roof, and they never appear to make a profit, even though they make millions in the stock market each year.”
Gabby stood up straighter and focused intently on whatever it was that Alice was trying to tell her. The temperature in the room was slightly too cold, and it made Gabby intensely aware that she should have worn pants, that every choice she’d made this morning was wrong, starting with her clothes. How was she supposed to fill the shoes of someone a roomful of EOD agents viewed as a peer? EOD might just be a few initials, but the name sounded ominous—the end of whose day? The bad guys, she hoped.
“Where do I come in?” Gabby asked.
Alice made uncomfortable direct eye contact. “You are going to work as Kramer’s assistant. We want you to observe and report back about what is happening in the office. We think Orlov is on his way from Russia for a meeting with Kramer. We need you on the inside to let us know what is going down.”
She nodded. That sounded fine. She could do office work and report back to Alice—easy-peasy.
“It’s fairly simple. Just pay attention to where the money is going at eStocks and who Kramer is in contact with.”
Gabby laughed. “Every time you say stocks I think of bouillon. The only stock I know about is the little cubes I use to make soup.” The minute it came out of her mouth, she wished she hadn’t said it. The word “bouillon” landed worse than her dress in this room.
Valentina flashed a look of horror and interrupted. “Agent Strong, we can’t send her in. She’s not prepared.”
Agent Strong looked at Valentina. “What do you propose instead?”
“Send me. I can be Agent Dagger’s replacement.”
“No, Agent Dagger worked there for nine months, and Kramer just started to trust her. She spent six months doing nothing but making coffee.”
Gabby would love a coffee.
“Darcy was one of our best agents, and she died.” Valentina gestured to Gabby. “This one doesn’t stand a chance.”