Chapter 31
Friday morning, Greene household
T he good news about Friday morning was that Gabby awoke to an alarm clock instead of 1) the rhythmic thumping of her grandma’s headboard against the wall, or 2) an abduction by Russian mobsters.
Gabby was adding another of her own chapters to Divorce: A New Beginning along with retail therapy and eating your feelings. This one would be called “Low Expectations: If You Don’t Expect Anything, You Can’t Be Disappointed.” Sloane Ellis hadn’t covered this topic.
Actually, Gabby’s expectations couldn’t get low enough. A glance out the bedroom window showed that Smirnov had made good on his threat. Mischa was parked in a gray sedan right at the end of her driveway. She had a great view of him recklessly sucking down a Big Gulp like he had access to a bathroom. He clearly hadn’t given birth twice. The remnants of last weekend’s sidewalk chalk art were right in front of his car. Lucas had spelled “POOPING!!” at the end of the driveway next to a picture of a guy pooping. Yesterday, she would have shaken her head in consternation. Today, she was ready to fiercely defend her child’s right to draw all the crappy artwork without a fucking mobster watching over him. Mischa needed to get out of her sight.
Filled with righteous fury, Gabby slipped on her Crocs and marched down her driveway, ready to read that mobster the riot act. Fuck Smirnov for threatening her children, for putting her in this position. How was she supposed to focus on ransacking Kramer’s office today with a murderer parked at the end of her driveway?
On impulse, she dragged the sprinkler toward the street. The least she could do was make him uncomfortable. How dare he drink a blue raz slushie like threatening her family was no big deal? After some effort, because the hose was stuck on something, she made it to the car, panting. She threw the sprinkler down. “You need to move!” she shouted. “I have children—” The hose was twisted, and she couldn’t get the damn thing to point toward the car.
“Gabby, what are you yelling at Mischa for?”
“Granny?” Gabby blinked at the scene before her. Her grandmother was standing at the driver’s side, leaning casually into the window. She appeared to be chatting up the mob security.
“Have you met Mischa?” Granny asked, as if Mischa were some long-lost cousin. “He’s just here… What did you say you’re doing again, Mischa?” she asked.
“Um, the city hired me to… uh… review traffic.” Mischa’s accent was thick. A person might assume that his dumb job description was a misstatement.
Gabby raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck is a review of traffic? This is Avocado Avenue.”
“Mischa is from the old country.” Granny patted his forearm fondly and rattled off a few sentences in Russian.
Mischa threw back his head and laughed. Gabby was ninety-nine percent sure it was a joke about her. Whatever it was must have been hysterical, because it launched a rapid-fire conversation entirely in Russian, leaving her standing and staring at the two of them.
“This is not polite,” she insisted. For all she knew, Granny was giving out the code to the house, not that she hadn’t been a little loose with that herself this week.
“Mischa was just saying that he is not having much luck with American girls. What’s the problem with them?”
Mischa rattled off some Russian, and Granny laughed. “They talk too much, eh.” Granny nodded in sympathy, as if she had the same problem. “What’s your favorite food, Mischa?” Granny asked.
“Pelmeni,” he answered. “You can’t get a good dumpling in Los Angeles.”
This was unbelievable. Maybe it would help, though. It might be harder for him to kill them after Granny spent all day talking him up. Or easier.
“I have to head into the office in a few minutes,” Gabby said.
Granny looked at Mischa. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Gabby fought the urge to shake her grandmother as they walked back to the house.
No matter what, she’d be done tomorrow. If she handed over the material to Smirnov and the EOD arrested Orlov, it would be over. No more Mischa. No more EOD. Failing—she tried not to think about that. Before she went in the house, she turned the water to the sprinkler on and was rewarded by a gratifying string of Russian profanity.
Twenty minutes later, as she was leaving the house, Gabby paused and looked her grandmother right in the eye. “Granny, you know the guy parked outside… he’s not really here for a traffic study.”
Granny raised an eyebrow. “Gabriella, I know that. I wasn’t born yesterday.” With a nod, she said, “He’s a nice boy, though.”
“What do you think he’s here for?”
Granny chuckled. “I don’t know, Gabby. You tell me.”
Gabby fought the impulse to confess everything to her grandma. It would be the right thing to do, to let her grandma understand the risks. But Smirnov told her to keep quiet. What if Granny called the police? Gabby had made this mess, and she would get them out of it. Granny could just take the kids to bingo and act sort of normal.
Granny, clearly not understanding the stakes, killed the moment of almost honesty with a stern look. She shook her head in disappointment. “I said to be salty with that young man, not scare him. You look like roadkill.”
After not sleeping all week and not bothering to Spanx in her muffin top, Gabby looked worse than roadkill. The roadkill in her closet went for $500.
As she pulled out of the driveway, Gabby locked eyes with Mischa. He gave a businesslike nod, and a grim understanding passed between them. He didn’t look eager to kill her, but if Smirnov ordered five hits, he’d deliver.
On the way to work, she popped into an overpriced hipster coffee shop, the kind that served coffee without sugar or syrup and fifteen-dollar avocado toast. On impulse, she bought a quad-shot latte and a couple of five-dollar scones, one for her and one for Fran. Doing something nice for someone else was always a good idea. Now that she knew Fran was killing herself trying to become Kramer’s partner or whatever, Gabby couldn’t help but feel bad for the woman. “That Jan” couldn’t even get his coffee right—Kramer couldn’t care less about her.
As she thought of Kramer, he texted, Plz reschedule security team. Not going to be in today.
Finally, a break. At least she could look for the codes in peace.
At eStocks, she pulled into the lot for the last time. Four short days had somehow flown by, but also felt like an eternity. It was sort of like raising kids—the days are long, but the years are short. The same principle applied to spy work. With a sigh, she turned on her earpiece. “Markus, you there?” she said, more abruptly than usual.
“Hey, superspy!” he said. “Smooth sailing today, huh?”
She answered with a half-hearted “Yep, it’s gonna be great.”
“I thought you’d be more excited now that the hard work is over. You did it, Gabby.”
If only. “I’m just tired. It’s been a big week, and I haven’t slept much.” Understatement of the year.
In the office, there was plenty to do. Justin had the party taken care of, but she still needed to prepare advertising pamphlets, print off business cards, and dumbest of all, finalize an investment PowerPoint. It would essentially be a Wikipedia-level report on what an investment was.
But first ransacking. She needed to find the codes. Kramer’s office was empty, the chair neatly tucked under the desk and the computer shut down. Before she searched, she needed to do some research. What the hell did a code even look like and where would someone keep it? Yesterday, Markus had said they were on the laptop, so she’d copied the whole thing, but she didn’t really know what a code was.
She googled “wire transfer codes” on her phone. After scrolling through several pages of information, she decided she was looking for a SWIFT code, which was a common part of international banking. Nine digits were used to identify the bank.
A nonbanking related search result captured her attention: “Scientists Prove That Women Really Prefer Larger Penises.” With a laugh, she switched to that. It contained a quote from the scientist who “discovered the G-spot.” Also funny. The takeaway was that if vaginal orgasms were real, big penises were better, so maybe men should be insecure, if women weren’t just imagining things. Gabby hoped to live long enough to find out.
Oh fuck, the bank codes. Where would a person keep a wire transfer code? The banks Kramer was using probably weren’t in Orange County.
Abandoning the search for the moment, Gabby popped back to her desk. “Is Kramer coming in today?” she asked Fran. Better safe than sorry.
“I don’t think so.” She shrugged. “I’m sure he’s dealing with cleanup or insurance claims after the garage fire.”
Mourning his Bentley, no doubt.
The only problem was how to justify spending the whole morning ransacking Kramer’s office like the DEA on a drug raid. Fran would probably have something to say about that.
“This friend of yours is not going to be at the party, is he?” Markus interrupted her train of thought.
This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, so she walked down to the bathroom and locked herself in. “Of course Justin is going to be at the party. He’s a perfectionist.”
“You can’t have a civilian who could potentially blow your cover at the party. Tell him he can’t come.”
“I need his help.”
“You have to,” he said. “For national security. And for your safety.”
“No,” she said. Who was he to talk about her safety when either he or one of his EOD buddies was working for Smirnov. Justin was the only one at the party whom she could trust implicitly.
“Why do you need help with a party? What else are you doing today anyway?”
His statement was an echo of so many others, Phil, her mother-in-law, her own mother, Shelly: “Aren’t you just sitting at home? Can’t you… help with the bake sale; walk my dog; pick up so-and-so from the airport; watch the class pet (Maribel, the corn snake) over winter break, oh, and Maribel eats live mice; be a shoulder to lean on for anyone having a bad day, aka do every damn thing that no one else had time for. Oh, and don’t forget Thanksgiving.” Here she was, at work full-time, moonlighting as a double agent, and someone was still asking her to plan a goddamn party. Fuck him.
“It might be a party, but there are serious consequences here,” Markus reiterated. “Justin can plan it, but he shouldn’t be there.”
“I am doing my best, and if that isn’t good enough, you can find some other woman to do the job.”
She yanked the earpiece out with a guttural noise of frustration and slammed the bathroom door on her way back to her desk. How much could one woman take? Two new jobs, inadequate childcare, almost zero sleep, multiple death threats for her and her kids and her ex-husband, whom she didn’t like that much but didn’t want dead. If Markus mentioned the damn party one more time, she would throw whatever kind of party she wanted, and the EOD better be happy with it. Like she told the kids, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
She wasn’t Darcy. She wasn’t a superspy. Hell, she wasn’t even that great a mom or housekeeper. If there were a stay-at-home-mom Olympics, she would come in near the back of the pack. She let the tears run down, partially to just let it out but also so Fran could see it.
It was always a party that was her breaking point. Life was hard enough, and then you had to bake a cake, put on a smile, and act like you wanted the neighbors to come over. Shelly was bad enough. Kramer—untenable. She rubbed her eyes, ensuring that her mascara went everywhere.
All she needed was to find the codes and stay alive, and she sure as hell wasn’t counting on Markus. If she said she needed privacy… yelling on the phone and crying was her best option at the moment. Her plan: Operation Pick a Fight with Phil.
Phil picked up the phone on the first ring. “Gaaaabs.” He drew out her name like a car salesman trying to slide into a deal. “What’s on your mind? You need something?”
“Phil, we need to talk.” Her voice was loud and strident, very un-Gabby-like.
“Whoa. We already got divorced or I’d be worried about the tone of your voice.”
“It’s about the pig,” she announced loudly, anger tinging her voice.
Fran must have heard things escalating quickly, and clogged over with her perfect posture. “Can you keep it down?”
Gabby covered up the mouthpiece. “Sorry. Fight with an ex.” She frowned. “I really need to take this. I’ll just go in Kramer’s office for a minute. Oh, and I forgot—” She pointed to the bag on her desk. “I got you a cinnamon scone.”
After turning off the brooch camera for privacy, she hustled from her desk to Kramer’s office, not waiting for Fran’s reaction. Just to really sell it, she said in an impassioned voice, way too loud for the office, “I want the pig back.” Carmen poked her head around the corner, wide-eyed, and mouthed, “The pig?” to Fran.
Yep. She was putting on a fairly decent show.
“Jesus, Gabby. What’s your problem?” Phil said. “We’re talking about a guinea pig. You never even liked the thing.” That was true, but it wasn’t about her. This was about Kyle and about getting into Kramer’s office.
“It’s Kyle’s pet, and she misses it.”
“You have the dog and the house. I think I should get the guinea pig.” Phil was being so petty it was unbelievable. A grown man living in a hotel did not need a guinea pig.
“No, Phil. It’s not for you or me to split. Kyle should get the guinea pig. It’s hers.”
With the windows fogged for privacy, she commenced ransacking. Phil, completely invested in the debate, gave a bunch of dumb reasons he should keep the guinea pig. He named it (he did not), he was better at guinea pig care (um… for real?), and he was all alone in the hotel.
That last one stopped her in her tracks. Phil was lonely, and he had just admitted it. For once, he’d been vulnerable and honest. For a second, she wanted to fix it, to rescue him from his loneliness, but she couldn’t. Not right now.
Focus on fighting about the guinea pig, Gabby. He started blathering again, at which point she went back to searching drawers. There wasn’t a lot of paper in the sleek office. Glass walls, glass desk, no knickknacks. In the digital age, physical transparency didn’t mean anything, because there was nothing to see, no piles of cash or diamonds sitting around. Everything worth hiding was already in the cloud. She’d searched everywhere just as he finished talking. Ransacking was pointless.
“Phil, you left. You chose to leave. It’s one thing to make that choice, to take your things, but to take Kyle’s pet? It’s more like you’re holding it hostage so that she comes to see you. Dr. Piggie belongs with Kyle. Not to mention, are you even allowed to have a guinea pig in that hotel?”
He made a growly noise, probably because she was right.
“Just be a good dad. Maybe find somewhere to live where the kids can be a part of your life.” With a furtive glance out the door—no one was looking for once—she sat down at the computer and booted the sucker up. It’s not like she knew what the codes looked like or what the file name would be. She didn’t know what she was doing, but it was the only place in the office left to look.
To her shock, Phil relented. “I’ll drop the pig by later.”
“Thank you.”
Instead of hanging up, he hung on the line for another beat. “You’re right. I should look for an apartment.”
“That’s a great idea.” She thought about saying more, about how she wanted to do better co-parenting, to remain a family, but just in a different shape. Instead, she said, “See you later, Phil.”
She hung up the phone, no closer to finding the codes, but on the other hand, she’d really made some progress with Phil. It only took spy training and being threatened with death to be able to stand up to her ex. If she survived the night, life was going to be better. She kicked back in Kramer’s chair and savored the moment.
As usual, Fran couldn’t mind her own business. She burst into the office without knocking, catching Gabby red-handed relaxing. “What are you doing, Camille?”
“I needed some privacy. Some personal stuff came up.”
“There was a lot of noise in here, Camille. What was with all of the banging?” She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “I hate to bring this up, but—”
Gabby leaned back. “Oh really?” Did Fran know she was an EOD plant? How could she?
“You’re stealing office supplies. My favorite coffee cup is missing, and I don’t know where any of the roller-ball pens are. And now you’re going through Kramer’s things? That’s audacious.”
Gabby started laughing. Fran was so far off base it was funny. “You’re kidding me.”
“If I tell Kramer you’re stealing supplies, you will lose this job.”
Why would Fran care if Gabby was stealing supplies? Who didn’t steal supplies now and then? Pens? Come on, Fran!
Gabby stood up to her full height. “Fran, I could give a damn about your stupid mug.” She shook her head in disgust. “I was trying to be your friend.”
Fran frowned at her. “Just because Kramer isn’t here, doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all.”
Gabby flashed an insolent look and shrugged. “I’m going to sit in here and work. Feel free to report me to Kramer.” Might as well work on the PowerPoint for the party in comfort. She did just that, but like she told her kids, “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.” Done was going to be good on this one. She found a stock photo of a graph going up and titled the slide “Profits are rising!” It was pure stock photo bullshit, pretty much the same as the office décor, come to think of it.
With one slide to go, LISTSERV sent her a notification. “ There’s a guy parked outside the Greene house. ” In the comments section, Shelly said, “ What’s with all the guys this week, Gabby? Are you doing a reno? ”
Gabby laughed. If only.
“ Getting some quotes ,” she answered. It was always better to give them an answer of some type or they’d keep asking. Shelly was relentless. Sure, there was nothing but suspicious activity this week, but that was just incidental. No one could do anything without Shelly having an opinion about it.
After Gabby had spent a few hours in Kramer’s office, her smartwatch announced it was time to go home in half an hour. At this point, who cared? She might as well be Phil looking for his wallet. It was hopeless. There was nothing to do but leave early.
She brushed past Fran on her way out, leaving the woman shell-shocked. “What about the party?” Fran called.
“Cross your fingers and hope for the best.”