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 herandher 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.
