Chapter 24
Wednesday morning before work and school, Greene household
I t was Granny’s first day watching the kids. On her way out the door, Gabby called, “Remember, no gluten!” Also fingers crossed that Granny was safe behind the wheel. LA traffic for an eighty-year-old woman who hadn’t gone anywhere for years—that was no joke.
“Gluten?” Granny said the word like she’d never heard of it. “What is that anyway?”
“It’s in bread.”
“What? Who can’t eat bread?” Granny was incredulous. “Gabby, how do you expect that boy to grow?”
“Lucas has allergies. He can’t eat eggs, dairy, nuts, or gluten.”
Granny squinted at her. “What can he eat?”
That was a fair question.
Before she left, Gabby looked at Lucas and said, “Granny is in charge this morning, so you listen to her.” With a deep breath, she said, “I need you to be a big boy. You know what you can and can’t eat, right?”
He nodded.
“It’s your job to be careful and take care of yourself.”
“Huh?” He looked confused.
Was this the first time she’d ever mentioned this to him, the first time she’d asked him to take personal responsibility? He could build a world in Minecraft and knew everything about sharks. She could probably ask him to do a little more.
“Lucas, I can’t always be there, so you need to pay attention. You copy?”
Another realization smacked her upside the head. This was probably how someone became a Phil, man babies who couldn’t do anything for themselves except make money. Phils weren’t born. They were made. In doing everything for these kids, she was shirking her responsibility to make them into decent humans.
She looked at Kyle and said, “I love you. Make sure Granny doesn’t kill anyone.”
Kyle laughed—a real laugh. “Okay, Mom. It’s fine.”
What was going on? Everything was going to hell in a handbasket, she wasn’t doing any of the mom things she normally did while she messed around with the EOD and the Mafia, but something in Kyle had loosened. An error screen flashed in her mind. The inputs did not compute. Had she been holding on too tight?
Granny thrust a coffee into Gabby’s hand and handed her her purse. “Relax, Gabriella. No one is going to die.”
Gabby clicked her seat belt and pushed PLAY on her audiobook. It had been a week since she’d spent any time with her personal divorce/life coach, Sloane Ellis. Markus—damn him—had mentioned that the chapter on coping mechanisms helped his work-life balance. Markus giving her any advice was suspect. First off, probably a mole. Second, a guy without kids talking to her about work-life balance issues—talk about a joke.
But she needed help figuring out how to deal with him, and Sloane was her best bet. As usual, the freeway was jam-packed. The EOD probably didn’t have to give anyone from LA tactical driving lessons, because that’s what it took to get to work. She swerved around a random shopping cart someone had left in the right lane, and sped up to join the mass movement toward downtown. A world of concrete subdivided into eight lanes of cars spread before her.
She’d always trusted people based on instinct—were they nice to her? Did they seem genuine? What kind of energy did they put out into the world? Markus passed all of her tests with flying colors, but even he had said, “There are no friends in espionage.”
“Hello again, this is Sloane Ellis, your favorite life coach.” Sloane’s voice filled the car with calm authority, the kind Gabby would like to project. “Today we’re going to talk about managing your daily life. After divorce, you might have more tasks, more responsibilities. Do you feel stressed all the time?”
An unhinged laugh escaped Gabby’s lips.
“Often the stress of divorce comes from managing life alone. You no longer have a partner to do the dishes, pay bills, take kids to school, or bring in half the income.”
That was true. At least Phil had taken care of the bills before.
“I can help.” Sloane’s promise rang through the car like a siren song.
Gabby turned up the volume.
“Number one: Say no to the tasks that don’t need to be done. Set strong boundaries. There is no balance without the word no.”
Justin had already told her this.
“For stressors that can’t be avoided, I recommend compartmentalization. Divide up the tasks. Put ‘bills’ in one virtual box and ‘making dinner’ in another. Do one thing at a time.”
Gabby laughed. Like she hadn’t tried.
“The world might be loud and filled with demands. You can’t change that, but you can make your own calm. Note, that I didn’t say ‘find.’ I said ‘make.’ Create a room in your mind. Make it beautiful, peaceful, empty. When you need to complete a task—pay the bills, do the laundry, make dinner, book a vacation—go in the room you created for yourself and don’t let anything in.”
Is this where all the men were when you needed them?
At work, she marched into Kramer’s office before she had even made his coffee. Better to rip off the Band-Aid and see if she still had a job straightaway. “Did you get the Evite?”
“Ah, the Evite. I better RSVP, huh?” Markus said, completely unaware of what he was walking into.
This was as good as she could hope for. At least she could get everyone’s response over with at the same time.
Kramer sat up and put his elbows on his desk as if she’d just reminded him to yell at her about that. “I did get the Evite. Are you out of your mind? This isn’t a fucking Halloween party! This is an investment business. Do you think you work for a frat?”
In the earpiece, Markus gasped. “Did Justin do this? What the hell? Why?”
Gabby took a deep breath. At least she didn’t have to go through this explanation twice. “Themed work parties are a trend,” she explained. “The goofier the better. They help people loosen up. It gives them something to talk about. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about it.” She hadn’t, and she doubted Justin had either. “Fran agrees.” Also a lie.
“It’s going to be a huge hit. Mafia-themed parties are very in. Not to mention, it goes with the venue.” Parroting Justin’s words, she said, “It came together organically.”
Kramer said “but” a few times, but it’s not like he could explain the real reason it was a problem. In a serious voice, Markus said, “You’ve placed the whole mission in jeopardy over this stupid invitation. What were you thinking?”
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said, ignoring the overwhelmingly negative reception. “Orlov already RSVP’d yes with the comment ‘Very funny.’” He’d probably meant that to be sarcastic, but on its face, he just wrote, “Very funny.”
Kramer chewed on that for a minute. Orlov was the whole point of the party. Really, as long as he was showing, nothing had gone too wrong. Still not looking happy, but his anger defused, Kramer dismissed her. “I’ve got enough to worry about. Just go get my coffee and don’t do anything else dumb.”
Her job at eStocks was almost one hundred percent making sure that that man never had to lift a finger. That’s how Kramer compartmentalized. He outsourced everything but the financial analysis and client contact. Pretty much the same as Phil had done.
Markus wasn’t moving on quite as easily. “Gabby, you invited the Mafia to a mob-themed party.” She could hear him trying to keep his voice out of the red zone. “Do you think this is a joke?”
She walked to the bathroom. The man needed some talking down. “Markus, I know it was bad, but Justin had no clue. And there was no harm done. I didn’t lose the job, and the party is happening.” It might just be a little awkward. Would the mob be offended when Justin got mob culture all wrong, like cheap cultural appropriation, wearing a Pocahontas costume to a traditional powwow? Or maybe it was open season because of the whole criminal element.
“I’m compartmentalizing,” she said, like she knew what she was doing. “You should too.”
“What is this?” He laughed at her advice. “ You are giving me spy lessons now?”
Tension broken, she leaned into the joke of her being in charge. “Markus,” she said in a faux serious voice, “I might not be able to achieve the deep focus necessary for compartmentalization with another human in my ear all day. If I put two sugars in that man’s coffee, I might lose my job.”
“I have faith, Gabby. And it’s different, we’re focusing on the same job together, isolating ourselves in the same virtual room.”
“Sounds romantic now,” she said. He made it sound like they were on a road trip and there was only one queen bed left.
With a laugh, he said, “You wish.”
After grabbing coffee and a donut for Kramer, Gabby knocked on his door out of courtesy. As usual, he didn’t even look up but just kept talking. Money, money, money—she could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes. Wealth management made sense. People needed money to exist in the world, but Kramer didn’t make it look good.
“Are you sure you are ready to close out the accounts?” Kramer scrolled through a screen. “The investment still has potential.” He was scrolling too quickly, almost frantically. “Whatever you want, though. You’re in charge.”
The person on the other end of the line must have said they wanted out, because Kramer said, “Okay. That’s no problem. I can wire the money now. I just need the account number.”
Wiring money.
Account numbers.
Ding ding ding!
Gabby held her breath at the buzzwords. Markus’s voice came through the earpiece in a whisper. “This is it, Gabby. Hang out as long as you can. See if you can get any more info. Anything. This is the break we’ve been waiting for.”
Gabby made a split-second decision to spill Kramer’s coffee all over the white rug. Drawing on a lifetime of clumsy mistakes, she made a show of tripping on the edge of the carpet, which really was a hazard. She lurched forward and let the coffee fly.
“Ohmygod. I’m so sorry, Mr. Kramer.” She looked up, horrified for real at the coffee stain on the white rug. “I can fix this. I pro—”
He glared hard and made a “be quiet!” gesture with his hands. His whole demeanor screamed, “Shut the fuck up. I’m busy.”
Gabby mouthed, “I’ll just clean this up.”
Kramer spun his chair in the other direction to hide her from view while she grabbed a napkin and made a show of dabbing at the spilled coffee. Luckily, Kramer wasn’t watching her at all, because the napkin was rapidly disintegrating on the rug. She was making a bigger mess. It was Lucas and the blue paint episode all over again.
Kramer hit the button to fog the transparent glass to his office, which she hadn’t noticed until now. Just like in the movies, he opened the painting on the wall behind his desk to expose a safe.
“That’s offshore, right?”
Gabby, still crouched on the carpet behind his desk, didn’t move a muscle. Markus wasn’t even breathing into the earpiece, silently waiting for Kramer to hang himself. This had to be big—Gabby didn’t know much about money laundering, but he was hitting all the buzzwords.
Kramer punched the keycode into the safe and pulled out a locked laptop while Gabby peered around the corner of the desk, making sure Markus had a view through her brooch.
Markus barely whispered, “That’s it. That’s gotta be where he makes all of his transfers.”
Gabby stopped scrubbing the carpet and watched him boot up the computer and punch in some numbers.
“Okay, can you confirm the transfer?” After a brief pause, he said, “Excellent.”
Just when the conversation turned to golf, Gabby took a breath. She scooped up all of the napkin crumbs and was about to stand, when she lost her balance and dropped back on her butt, right onto the donut, with a squish of crème filling and the muffled crack of the plate.
“Damn it!”
Kramer looked her way. “What are you still doing in here?” he said, as if she hadn’t been in there for the last five minutes pouring a coffee on the ground and grinding a napkin into the carpet. When he saw her scraping a donut off the ass of her cute jeans, he laughed it off. “Jesus Christ, Camille.”
“I know. I’m such a klutz,” she said, shaking her head, playing up the whole “I can’t be a spy because I’m such a bumbling idiot!” angle, easy to sell because she believed it herself.
“Just get me a new coffee,” he said as he slid the computer back in its safe and shut the painting over it.
“I did what I could with the carpet for now. I’ll finish cleaning later.” She’d actually massacred it, but that would give her something else to do in his office later.
Before getting Kramer a fresh coffee and donut, she went to the bathroom to scrape the donut off her pants.
“Nice one,” Markus ribbed her.
“Doing a squat in heels isn’t in my wheelhouse at the moment.” If she was going to continue in this job, which she obviously wasn’t, she would need to get a handle on her fitness.
“Well, you’re not a stripper. Actually, you shouldn’t be wearing heels at all. Spies only wear heels in movies. You need something you can maneuver in.”
“Valentina wears heels every day.” She good and damn well wasn’t going to be wearing orthopedic shoes while Valentina dressed like a TV spy. “I’m not even forty.” Granny could probably do this better than her.
“I’m sure you can get back in twerking shape, if that’s what you want,” Markus said dryly. “That laptop, though. That could be our big break.”
“Oh, that’s good news,” Gabby said as she finished cleaning glaze off her pants.
“A laptop like that is too impenetrable to access remotely. All of his transfers must be on there, maybe even a stored password.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, letting him mansplain money laundering to her. This part seemed pretty simple. Gabby showed her ass to the mirror and craned her neck around to make sure she got all the donut flakes off.
“You know I can see you, Gabby.”
“Oh, sorry. But you know I can’t walk around with cream filling all over my—”
“Just stop talking and turn around. I refuse to say any more on this topic.” He took a cleansing breath. “Anyway, as I was saying, that laptop has got to have all of the Russians’ best tech on it.”
“Russian tech?” That didn’t sound too impressive. Gabby leaned over and brushed crumbs out of her cleavage.
“That’s enough with the mirror,” he said, exasperated. “Button up your shirt, give that man his coffee, and stop messing with me.”
“You’re kidding, right?” He wasn’t really affected by her wardrobe adjustments. He couldn’t be. Phil had been treating her like the lunch lady for literally years. She might as well be wearing a hairnet and ladling up cafeteria spaghetti.
“Why would I be kidding?”
“Well, okay,” she said, not quite believing him. Maybe because he was the mole and he was trying to butter her up. He wasn’t too good-looking to be a spy. He was exactly good-looking enough, a honey trap seducing her into spilling her secrets. A cocktail of confusion, power, and elation surged through her veins.
She dropped the topic and headed back to Kramer’s office. Mid donut delivery, Kramer had another request. “Camille, get me some curry from that Thai place.”
She was about to order it through Uber Eats, when he said, “Pick it up yourself. Last time the delivery guy got my order wrong. I want red curry, spicy, no bamboo shoots.”
Her afternoon was going to go sideways because Kramer had too many bamboo shoots in his curry last time. That man. As she left on another dumb errand, all she could say was thank god Justin was doing the party.
In the car on the way to pick up curry, her thoughts drifted back to that laptop. Kramer had definitely done a transfer on it. It only made sense that the codes Smirnov wanted were stored there too. She knew they weren’t on a Post-it note somewhere. And it’s not like Kramer would use one of those password-keeping apps for transferring millions of dollars.
When the car came to life and Gabby’s phone connected, Sloane Ellis’s voice filled the car. “Give yourself enough time to complete tasks. Focusing on one task at a time instead of letting your mind race through twelve activities is always more efficient.”
With men it was always “I can’t, I’m fixing the car” or “I’m mowing the lawn” or “I’ll be at the office.” Meanwhile, they left the thousands of other household tasks to women. And it was always a laundry list: The kids need dinner, but you forget to get the gluten-free noodles, so you have to figure out how to make a zucchini lasagna. Oh, and his mother needs a present because it’s her birthday (he forgot), the laundry and dishes need to be done, and the kids have to do their homework. To top it off, someone needs to check in and talk to the kids about how they are doing because if no one does the emotional labor, you’re just raising well-fed sociopaths. Or maybe it was psychopaths? Whichever one was just an asshole but not a serial killer. Knock on wood. Oh, and nobody brushed their teeth.
She said, “You know, focusing on one task at a time seems like a male privilege to me.”
Markus said, “I don’t get what you mean.”
“Women multitask. Men compartmentalize. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”
“I get what you’re saying, but you’re not at home. And your feelings are some of the things you should be compartmentalizing. Literally, save them for later because they’re making it harder for you to focus on the task at hand.”
Her voice Ginsu sharp, Gabby said, “What are you talking about, Markus? If I’d wanted to compartmentalize things, I would have started selling Tupperware with Shelly.”
“Huh?”
That’s right. It’s not like he knew who Shelly was.
Markus let out a breath. “Just breathe, Gabby, and turn off Sloane. I don’t know what’s going on, but you seem on edge today. Is there something bothering you?”
“Take your pick, Markus. There are about twelve major problems today alone.”
“You need to figure out how to handle the stress. Compartmentalizing isn’t a joke. We’re counting on you.”
“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded angry, even to her own ears. She was angry.
“I need you to get that laptop.”
“How, Markus? You saw where it is. It’s behind Kramer’s desk, and he never leaves. He doesn’t have to because he makes me run all of his errands. I’m driving across town to get his favorite curry right now.” Speak of the devil, a text came through on Camille Walker’s phone. Kramer probably needed her to pick up his dry cleaning too.
“Gabby, you are the one in the office. You see his patterns. Watch him a little more closely. Does he take a long poop at the same time every day? Is he late some days of the week? What are his weaknesses? Does he like pretty girls and we could send in someone to flirt with him while you break into the safe? Think.”
“I’m doing this job with less than a week of training while single parenting.” Just to complicate things, the Mafia was threatening her family, but she couldn’t say that part aloud. She’d been holding it together, keeping all of her frustrations in, rolling with each new punch. With each comment from Markus, she could feel the dam start to break.
“I know, but you can do better.” He expelled a frustrated breath. “You aren’t even listening. Yesterday, you hired an outside person, which could compromise the mission. You almost got fired.”
“You think I don’t know that? I am doing my best. Back off, Markus.” This was a warning for his own good.
“Your best isn’t good enough. Do better.”
Gabby gasped. “Compartmentalize this, Markus!” And she yanked her earpiece out and threw it on the passenger seat next to Camille Walker’s phone.