14. Signs Your Best Friend is a Spy #2
I pause, trying to mentally retrace my movements, but memory retrieval is one of those skills that abandons me precisely when I need it.
Then I smile. A few months ago, Charlie and I were doing a marathon shopping day, and while we were in a thrift store, I’d needed both hands to look at a cute skirt.
So, I asked the mannequin right next to it to “hold my purse,” and hooked it on its arm.
We’d made it through a handful more stores before I realized it was missing, and we had to backtrack through them all to find where I’d left it.
By the time we’d finished shopping, Charlie had bought me an AirTag to keep inside my purse specifically for situations like this. I open the app and tap on the tag.
My purse is at a private aviation complex outside Baltimore. For several seconds, I can only blink at the map. My purse has been stolen. I probably need to worry about identity theft! And someone selling my library card on the black market. I need to get it back.
I race out to my car, my mind whirring. I’ve just gotten on Interstate 70, heading toward Baltimore, when a memory catches up with me.
Last night, Miles and I got curry. Afterward, we walked along the river trail in Cloakwood because the weather was unseasonably warm and neither of us wanted to go home yet.
I didn’t want to carry my purse, and I didn’t want to leave it visible inside his car, so I put it in his trunk.
Where it apparently still is. And I had shared the AirTag with Miles, so it wouldn’t have even notified him that an AirTag was traveling with him. He probably has no idea I left it in his trunk.
I look at the map again. The hangar must be where Miles is working today, which means my plan doesn’t need to change. I can retrieve my purse and demand answers in person. Two problems solved by one impulsive forty-minute drive.
My phone leads me to a complex made up of several low buildings and enormous metal hangars.
Small planes and one sleek white jet sit along the edge of the tarmac.
A sign points visitors toward a charter office, and another warns that access beyond the marked area is restricted.
I pass a few entrances with gates and No Trespassing signs, but the lot where Miles’s car is has an open gate.
I pull into the lot and immediately spot Miles’s car parked near the far end.
My purse’s AirTag shows it’s somewhere in the vicinity of his trunk.
I park several spaces away and get out. I could wait beside his car, but I think I’ve done more than enough waiting for one day.
If Miles is inside the charter office, I can retrieve my purse and find out what he plans to tell me—or at least how worried to be—instead of spending the next three hours inventing increasingly calamitous possibilities.
I follow the walkway toward the office. I can see the reception area through the front windows, but no one is behind the desk, so instead, I head toward the voices drifting from one of the open hangar bays behind it.
I peek around the corner of the building, trying to determine whether there’s a public entrance on that side.
There are four people inside—a man in a maintenance uniform standing near a rolling tool chest, a woman in a camel-colored coat beside the stairs leading into a jet, a man next to her holding a tablet, and a dozen feet from them, a dark-haired man in an expensive suit.
I’m about to turn back toward the charter office when the dark-haired man shifts his weight.
Every thought in my head stops.
He looks nothing like Miles.
His hair is darker, parted and combed in a way Miles never wears.
A closely trimmed beard changes the shape of his jaw.
Tortoiseshell glasses cover part of his face, his nose has a slightly different shape, and his suit probably costs more than the combined value of every piece of furniture in my townhouse.
But he stands exactly like Miles.
Not similarly. Not in a way that reminds me of him. Exactly.
He adjusts one cuff, then glances toward the polished side of the jet—not directly at it, but at the reflection it gives him of the rest of the hangar.
Just like he does everywhere we go.
My heart thuds.
There could be another explanation. Some people have similar mannerisms. Maybe this is a wealthy businessman who coincidentally moves like my best friend and is standing fifty yards from my best friend’s car.
I pull out my phone and send Miles a text.
Reese: Are you still at work?
The man reaches into his jacket, pulls out a phone, and types. My phone buzzes.
Miles: Yes. Can’t talk. Seven.
I slowly look from the message back to the man in the hangar as he puts his phone away.
“Oh,” I whisper. My legs are frozen in place as I stare, unbelieving, at Miles.
The woman in the camel coat walks toward him. He turns, and his entire posture changes. His expression becomes pleasantly attentive. Relaxed. Professional.
Not Miles.
Except absolutely Miles.
“Your sponsor’s referral got you this meeting,” the woman says. “It doesn’t get you through the next door.”
“I’d be disappointed if it did.”
She watches him for a moment. “A client needs an item moved through three jurisdictions. The original route is secure, the documentation is clean, and forty-eight hours before transfer, you learn the courier may be compromised. What do you change?”
“Nothing.”
The woman’s eyebrows rise.
“Not until I know whether the courier is actually compromised or someone wants me to think he is.”
“And if he is?”
“I replace him.”
“Not the route?”
“The route isn’t the problem.”
The man holding the tablet makes a note.
I stare. Maybe this actually is client relations. Very, very strange client relations involving mystery items and compromised couriers.
The woman asks, “The client insists on using him.”
“Then the client isn’t paying me for my judgment. He’s paying me to take the blame when his goes badly.”
The corner of her mouth moves.
Miles is watching her hands. Her shoulders. The angle of her feet.
He’s reading her.
Just like he reads strangers when we’re people-watching.
The man with the tablet speaks next. “Someone approaches you after the transfer and offers twice your fee for the name of the client.”
Miles barely pauses. “Then I know two things.”
“What?”
“They don’t know the client’s name, and someone involved in the transfer talks too much.”
Another note goes onto the tablet.
The woman circles him slowly enough that it feels less like a conversation and more like an inspection.
“What would you do with that information?”
“Find the person who talks too much.”
“And then?”
“That depends on why they were talking.”
She studies him. Something about this is definitely not normal.
She steps closer to Miles as she asks another question I can’t hear. Her shoulder brushes his arm as she moves past him. Miles doesn’t react.
A few seconds later, the woman checks her phone, and something in her expression changes. The man in the maintenance uniform across the hangar straightens.
Miles sees both.
The woman takes a step back. “This meeting is over.”
“Is there a problem?”
“You’ll be contacted if we decide to proceed.”
She turns sharply toward the opposite side of the hangar.
As she passes Miles, his hand brushes the strap of her bag.
The movement is so quick and natural that I would never have noticed it before he taught me what a brush pass looked like.