Chapter 20
Tuesday morning, getting ready for work and school (almost like she hadn’t just been abducted), Greene household
G abby kicked her Crocs into a growing pile of shoes by the front door and unclipped Bubbles’ leash. Twenty-six minutes left to get ready and follow Valentina to her meeting. A little voice in the back of her head needled her. Why do you want Valentina to be the mole so bad, Gabby?
It wasn’t about Valentina so much—she didn’t think—it was that she didn’t want it to be Markus. And not only because he was cute. Markus was her partner.
The way Valentina had said she was meeting Markus—that sneaky little smile that disappeared as quickly as invisible ink—Gabby could just tell something was up. If she knew Valentina was the mole, she could go to the EOD for help with the Smirnov situation.
“Justin, can you get the kids on the bus? I just got a text from my boss,” Gabby lied.
Justin was sitting in the exact same spot he had been when she left. His voice laden with sarcasm, he said, “What, does he need his coffee early?” The subtext was “What about me?” which was a valid point. Her BFF was showing up for her, and she was running off.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she said, briefly pausing and sucking down half her latte in a couple of gulps. “I just really don’t want to disappoint him on my second day. I need this job.”
“It’s fine,” he said, semi-convincingly. “I’ll get the kids on the bus. My client this week canceled, so I have some time.”
“Oh no! The ABBA-themed baby shower?” she called from the downstairs bathroom as she tried to quickly put herself together.
“I guess they wanted something more traditional in the end. I’m pretty sure the mother-in-law got involved.” More brightly, he added, “So anyways, I’m free for a few days.”
She pushed open the door. “I hope you charged them. Does this shirt look okay?”
He nodded. “Looks great. And yeah, they lost their deposit, plus a rotating mirror ball and a karaoke machine I bought for the occasion.”
“Was the baby having a coming-out party?” Gabby asked dryly.
“Oh, stop.” He waved his hand at her.
“So you’re free this week?” Gabby’s wheels were turning. Not that she wanted to take advantage of Justin.
“No comment.” He took a sip of his latte. “But your granny’s coming, right? I thought you were covered.”
“We’ll see.” Granny wasn’t coming anywhere near the house if she didn’t find the mole and get EOD protection first. It was a “developing situation,” to use news terms.
Justin took the request in stride. “Betty Danger needs more practice with her housewifery. Just let me know what you need this week.”
“Are you serious?”
With a long-suffering, been-married-for-fifteen-years sigh, he said, “Yes.”
“Justin, you’re a lifesaver.”
“Since Hugh won’t agree to children, I might as well drive yours around a little.” He held up his hand in the universal sign of “stop before you get ahead of yourself.”
“All I need. Thank you.”
Kyle and Lucas were both sitting at the kitchen table with blank morning stares. Gabby pulled their lunches out of the fridge and set clean water bottles on the counter. “Lunches are packed.”
“Uh-huh,” Kyle said, never looking up from her phone. Gabby normally would have said something, but the minute Kyle put it down, the bickering would start. Justin didn’t need that. Who did?
“Betty’s gonna pick you up,” Justin announced. “I have a thing tonight, so I’ll just get in costume early.”
“Yes,” Lucas said like it was a total score, and Kyle looked pleased as punch. Betty Danger really tended to overdo things, but in a good way. There would be gourmet after-school snacks for sure, plus a rotating mirror ball and a karaoke machine, if Gabby had to guess.
Gabby finished changing into her office clothes in less than five minutes and glanced at her watch. She had four minutes until Valentina was done, assuming Valentina ran about the same pace as the winner of that charity 5K. Running was so dumb, especially now that Gabby knew you could just buy some Spanx and take off ten pounds that way.
Before stepping out the door, Gabby slipped on a pair of oversized sunglasses and tucked her red hair under a baseball hat. She pulled Darcy’s car, which was thankfully nondescript, in a spot a block from the trailhead, just close enough for a view of Valentina’s Dodge Charger. Clearly, Valentina wasn’t playing it low-key this morning. Gabby had already gotten a notice from the LISTSERV with a picture of Valentina’s car and the comment “Who bought the Charger?”
Valentina might be a spy, but she had no clue how nosy the people on Avocado Avenue were.
For the first time in her entire life, Gabby’s math was perfect. Valentina popped out of the trail, looking sweaty, out of breath, and annoyed. At her car, she took a swig of water and stretched her quads briefly before peeling out of the parking lot.
Gabby followed as far behind Valentina as she dared. Once they were on the highway, she dropped a couple of car lengths behind. In her head, she heard Markus admonishing, “Slow your roll, Jane Bond.”
Fifteen minutes later, Valentina pulled into a Starbucks. Gabby looked for some on-street parking with a view of the store, but it was California. After circling the block twice, she almost gave up until someone finally left. It was criminal the way people just sat in their cars, scrolling Insta, taking up space. Rationalizing that no one was looking for her anyway, she pulled into the lot.
While she waited for Valentina to make a move, she dialed her mom. Might as well get that convo out of the way on her stakeout. As she was chatting, she glanced in the rearview mirror and actually startled herself. Her look said “kidnapped last night.”
“Hi, Mom. I’m sort of in a rush this morning, but did you get my text?”
“The one where you are backing out of helping your grandmother?”
“Yes, that’s the one.” She didn’t have time to beat around the bush with passive-aggressive comments. She swiped on some lipstick to help with her corpse-like pallor. Smirnov might as well have killed her last night from the way she looked. “I have a major… roach problem. Today isn’t a good day.”
“Roaches? Oh no, have you been letting the dishes pile up?”
Gabby could scream. Why had she called her mom on a stakeout? Worst decision ever.
“If the roach problem is too bad for your grandmother, is it safe for the kids?”
“I just don’t want to add anything more until I get this handled, Mom.”
Her mom made a judgmental noise in the back of her throat.
When Gabby was mid lipstick application and only halfway through the convo with her mom, Markus walked out of Starbucks. “Oh fuck!” Gabby muttered and slunk low in her seat to stay out of view. It would have been too simple to catch Valentina in a lie, mole identified and her biggest problem solved before the day started. Real life didn’t produce answers that quickly.
Because this car was the devil, the phone call suddenly changed to go through the car’s speakers at top volume. “Fine,” her mom said, probably loud enough for everyone at Starbucks to hear. “But you know I have that cruise, and Granny has already been evicted.”
“I just can’t, Mom,” Gabby whispered. She tried to change the output from the car back to the phone, but somehow dropped the phone under her seat.
“What?” her mom yelled louder. “Are you talking through the car again? I can’t hear you.”
“I’m driving. I have to.” She was going to die.
She sat up just enough to watch Valentina and Markus in the side mirror. Markus slid his sunglasses down and strode toward a picnic table probably ten feet behind her car. His walk was unhurried but purposeful—the speed of seduction. She was a grown-up woman with kids. Markus was her colleague, not to mention a candidate for the mole. She needed to get. It. Together.
Valentina and Markus were dressed all in black, looking European and drinking iced lattes. Gabby looked freshly kidnapped and was talking to her mom on speakerphone at top volume. What in the hell was she doing with her life?
“What is this job anyway? How are the kids handling the change? The divorce and now a new job?” Her mom’s disapproval was coming through loud and clear.
As if she wasn’t worried enough about the kids without sideways comments.
Back at the spy table, Valentina gestured with her hands, looking frustrated. Probably upset about being stuck on a trail all morning. Markus touched her forearm, making Gabby bristle. What was the matter with her? Markus was her handler, not her boyfriend. Not to mention, possibly a mole.
Gabby had never thought she’d be horny as a middle-aged woman, but here she was. It was television’s fault. Sitcom moms were never horny, only the dads. Romance novels mostly featured twenty-year-olds. Hollywood actresses could be sexual only if they looked twenty-five. It was all a lie. Her sexuality had not conveniently expired at the age of thirty, leaving her to tend to everyone else’s needs without conflict.
With a resigned shake of her head, Valentina seemed to give up on whatever point she was making. Finally, Valentina waved, ending the convo with Markus.
“I have to go, Mom.”
“What is going on with you?” her mom said. “Are you dating again? You know the kids aren’t ready for that.”
Now, to get the phone from under the seat. While trying to stay low, she backed up the seat as far as it would go. While reaching under it, she somehow pressed the windshield wiper lever up. It activated the cleaning mechanism. From her spot crouched on the floor, Gabby watched the windshield wiper fluid miss the windshield entirely and arc over the roof of the car.
“What the fuck?” Markus yelled. It must have been a direct hit. She slunk even lower as the wipers on her car squeaked over a completely dry windshield.
“Where did that come from?”
Her mom repeated, “You didn’t answer. Are you dating?”
“I gotta go, Mom.” She hit END CALL on the console and took a shaky breath.
Because the car truly was the devil, it switched to the last thing she’d listened to on Spotify. The unmistakable opening chords of the James Bond theme song blared: “Dum di-di dum dum!”
“Gabby?” Markus called as he walked over to her car. “Is that you?”
He appeared at the window. “Markus!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Um…” He looked down at her, still partly slunk down in her seat, which was backed up as far as possible. “What are you doing?”
She laughed. “I’m having a moment.” That was the truth. “I was going to get a coffee on my way to work, but I dropped my phone under the seat and my mom called. This little area here”—she gestured to the front seat—“this is the Bermuda Triangle, amirite? Amelia Earhart is probably under the seat with my phone.”
He laughed, seemingly satisfied with her explanation. “Let’s get you a coffee and get you off to work then. You’re going to have to hurry.”
He shook his head. “Today should be better. You did great yesterday, even with all of the obstacles.”
“Really? You think so?” The pain of the last hour was forgotten with one compliment.
“Yeah. You lost your earpiece and still kept it together all day.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Oh, and I ran into Valentina this morning.”
He nodded. “So I heard.”
So she wasn’t hiding anything…
While they were in line grabbing a latte, Markus checked his phone. When he swiped up, probably meaning to check the time or his email or something, a show started playing—a bunch of hot young people, poolside, speaking Russian.
A warning sign flashed in her mind. “Do you speak Russian?”
A little flustered, he said, “I’m trying to become more fluent, and I’ve gotten into some Russian reality TV. This one’s about psychics, Novaya Bitva Ekstrasensov . I watch Russian Cops too. It’s more fun than DuoLingo.”
“Do all of the agents speak Russian?”
He shook his head.
Something about this didn’t sit right. How close were his ties with Russia? Was he the mole? Wikipedia said that you had to be Russian or have significant ties to Russia to join the Russian Mafia. Some sources said you had to have been in a Russian prison for three years.
After she grabbed a four-shot latte, she asked, “Markus, do you think I’m in danger at all?” while watching his expression carefully.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Someone got to Darcy, right?” He didn’t answer, because they both knew the answer. She said, “I want to take more precautions. I don’t want to be a sitting duck.”
“You’re as safe as any EOD agent is, at least that I know of.” He was looking deep into her eyes. “You’re not holding back anything, are you? Did something happen while we were out of touch yesterday?”
She shook her head. “Everything was fine.”
“Tell me the minute you get a bad feeling about anything. Promise me. That’s how you stay safe. Communication. You’re on the ground, and I’m stuck off-site for the moment.” The way he said “stuck off-site” made it seem like he was really resentful of the fact, champing at the bit to get back into the action.
“Of course,” she answered, but telling him the problem was the one thing she couldn’t do. Smirnov had made that much clear. Markus might be handsome and sweet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a gangster. The fact that she liked him made it all the more likely. Gabby never liked anyone good for her.
Gabby was alone.