Chapter Nine
With the casserole dish in hand, Vanka stepped onto her front porch and waited until Spiker closed the front door. “Why’d you ask if I was married?”
“I wanted to know.” Spiker didn’t miss a beat.
They followed the sidewalk and faced the sun as it slowly dipped into the western sky. “Have you ever been?”
Spiker snorted. “Married? No.”
“Of course not.” They turned into a driveway, following a stone pathway, and smelled the food on the grill.
Muffled laughter carried on the warm early-evening air. She hadn’t asked who was on Andy’s guest list for the evening. He always had a good crew of neighbors and friends from his days in the military, and she usually got on well with everyone.
The neighbors didn’t require introductory small talk.
They knew her as the petite blonde with a slight—depending on who you asked—accent, who often traveled for work with a niche accounting firm that unearthed financial wrongdoing the same way a detective investigated a crime scene.
She’d regale them with fictitious stories about her forensic accounting adventures.
Sometimes she’d throw in a moral to her story—don’t cheat on your spouse while stashing cash in the Caymans—but mostly, Vanka liked to share a feel-good anecdote where good always triumphed over evil. The theme resonated with everyone, and that was, more or less, how she viewed her life as well.
In her job, though, that line seemed fuzzier some days than others.
An expert marksman, she could eliminate a target from a thousand meters away without messing up her hair and nails.
A petty litmus test. She knew that but didn’t care.
She’d long ago come to grips with who she was and what she liked.
Vanka liked sharp outfits and on-trend nail color.
She wasn’t vain; it had taken years to realize that she’d grown up understanding the intrinsic difference between appreciating beauty and rising to society’s standards of beauty.
Vanka had her parents to thank for that.
Art and science were enmeshed in their world, and she hadn’t known the difference.
What kid didn’t know the connection between fashion and furniture in the time of King Louis XIV?
Vanka remembered the blank stares she received from her so-called peers when her Nan had tried to enroll her in a secondary school.
Her class was asked to write a persuasive essay.
Vanka hadn’t planned to exert too much effort—after all, she was an angry and brooding teenager.
Her topic had been a no-brainer. Chairs in the early to mid-1600s were low to the ground; squatty, in her opinion.
But they had to be. Fashion of the time was foolish and impractical.
The necklines alone, with their ruffles and starch, jewels and pearls, made movement impossibly impractical, yet they conveyed wealth and status.
The harder it was to move, the better off a person must be.
After all, why move when status and money allowed others to move on their behalf?
Her argument hadn’t been persuasive. It landed her in the headmaster’s office, where Nan was called in for the meeting.
Her teacher handed her essay to the headmaster, who then read a section where Vanka connected squatty furniture to elongated dining utensils.
“Slender, lengthened forks became a status symbol. It could be argued that nobility did not want to pick up food with their fingers. But similar to the lowered chairs, the extended lengths allowed the clothing-restricted to be able to feed themselves.”
She and Nan exchanged glances. Neither saw the obvious problem that the school had. Vanka was swiftly expelled for plagiarism, an accusation that left them in a fit of giggles all the way home.
Despite times when normal society didn’t understand her, Vanka appreciated the neighborhood’s predictable routine.
She and Andy were the only single residents in their thirties in a two-block radius.
The lion’s share could be categorized as married, once-married, living-as-though-married, or remarried.
Kids and dogs were optional accessories.
The area was the perfect location to relax between assignments.
She’d never had the urge to become close with her neighbors.
The relationships were surface-level and pleasant.
But she enjoyed them and never wanted to know more than what was necessary.
Her research had been invasive—employment, financial, and criminal problems—but that was as much to keep them safe as to keep herself safe.
Snooping didn’t weigh heavily on her conscience. The only other option she had, growing close enough to her neighbors to ask who they were as individuals outside their families, would take too much time. The opportunity to discover pertinent information might not even come up.
Who are you?
No, really, who are you?
Not your titles of parent, partner, or employee.
You—just you: Who are you?
No one asked those questions because no one wanted to give those answers. Really knowing oneself could be terrifying. Only the lucky ones could answer and ask others who they cared about—and only if they were really lucky.
Spiker’s arm brushed hers as he ducked under a white birch’s low-hanging branch.
Did she know who Spiker really was? Today shed a light on the answer: not really, and that hurt a little.
Like Vanka’s Nan, he was the closest thing she had to family.
Nan wasn’t blood, but she was the closest thing that Vanka had after her parents died.
Like Vanka’s parents, Nan made sure she understood that life had to have meaning. To this day, she asked Vanka the tough questions her parents would’ve expected her to ask the world. The questions that forced Vanka to be uncomfortable. To be alive and acknowledge everything the world had to offer.
Good and evil.
Wealth and destitution.
Justice, fairness, and the murky grounds of retribution and recalibration.
Their lives had meant something. Her parents had embraced their purpose. She only wished they could see her now. They would be so proud of her.
They stopped outside the backyard gate. Spiker’s hand rested on the latch. “Anything interesting I need to know about this guy?”
“Former Marine. Never married. Government contractor, specializing in GPS tech.”
“Security clearance?” he asked.
She nodded. “BPSS.”
Spiker shrugged off the Baseline Personnel Security Standard. “Then there’s nothing to worry about?”
Vanka side-eyed him and shook her head. “Those are famous last words.”
Spiker cursed under his breath. “Did I just jinx us?”
“Better not have,” Vanka warned.
He laughed, not because of the playful way her laser-glare just threatened to leave him dead in the front yard, but because he liked that tone of voice.
A little bossy. A little know-it-all. A lot don’t-fuck-with-my-good-thing.
He liked that tenacity. Vanka was easy to underestimate.
Under her gloss and glamor, the woman had the unyielding persistence of a bulldog.
If she liked where she lived, no matter how out-of-character he might deem her little colonial house in the DC suburbs, then by God, she’d risk life and limb to stand her ground.
“I’d tell you if there was something to fret over. And, obviously, I wouldn’t live here.”
“Obviously,” he mimicked, murdering a British accent as he unlatched the gate and held it open for her. “You’d live some place with your type of people, like New York City.”
Vanka led them along a stone path toward the backyard. “You’re about to meet my type of people.”
“Uh-huh.” They paused at the corner of the two-story brick house. A large hedge blocked his view into the backyard and her so-called people. “I’m totally buying that load of bull crap.”
Annoyance crinkled her nose. “What is wrong with you?”
“A little bit of everything these days.” He stepped around the hedge.
A well-manicured yard opened to a stone patio arranged as an upscale, outdoor kitchen and living room.
This was no bachelor pad. Andy’s backyard setup could have been photographed for a magazine catering to outdoor man caves.
“I need something like this at my place.”
Andy’s back was turned toward them as he faced the oversize grill built into a matching stone counter. He piled aluminum-foil-wrapped potatoes on a tray next to the kabobs that awaited their turn.
Vanka set the fruit salad on a side table that matched a much larger dining table. The fruit salad was one of three side dishes: a collection of salsas to pair with blue corn tortilla chips, and a cold bean dish with diced onions and peppers and flecks of parsley.
Spiker moved to their host, and Vanka joined by his side as Andy turned from the grill. “I’ve never been a jealous man.”
“Bullshit,” Vanka stage whispered.
Andy nodded like a man who understood the effect of high-end appliances landscaped into a well-designed suburban oasis.
“But I need this set up in my backyard.” With ample counter space and the perfect amount of shade, this was like a little slice of unpretentious heaven that he hadn’t known could exist. His gaze followed the stone counter until it dead-ended in the opening of what could’ve been a short, stocky chimney. “That’s a pizza oven?”
“You know it,” Andy chuckled.
“Damn.” This was nothing like the outdoor living spaces that he’d come across on the job. Those were designed to make a statement, one where the mega-mansions of the rich and evil could offer a shoutout to their fellow crime lords and drug kings, bragging, Business is good.
The palatial homes with trendy outdoor kitchens had long ago become cliché, with their cliffside cabanas and crystal chandeliers that reflected over infinity pools.
That only meant one thing: they had a shit ton more work to do—at least, back when GSI knew the difference between criminals and criminal-clients.