1630 hours (military time because she’s not a baby agent anymore), on the stationary bike going nowhere fast, EOD headquarters
I got this.” Gabby Greene slipped on her bike shoes and strode into the Elite Operatives Division gym like she owned it, but with the awkward gait of someone who had put on their clip-on shoes too far away from the bike. Those things were not made for walking. In a stiff-legged, might-as-well-be-wearing-ski-boots gait, she made it to the exercise bike for some cardio. It was Gabby’s second month of being a field agent for the EOD, making her a Top Gun of the spy world. “Highway to the Danger Zone” might as well be her theme song, which also betrayed her age. Did the younger operatives know that movie?
The Thirty-Eight-Year-Old Female with Two Kids and a Muffin Top division of the espionage world was almost nonexistent, even in 2026. No female president and not too many chubby middle-aged ladies in the field. It was a dog-eat-dog, grab-em-by-the-pussy world out there. If your mascara wasn’t waterproof, don’t bother. Although tubing mascara did seem to be a good alternative. Women were changing the world for the better every day.
Agent Greene had to be able to handle any muscled-up NavySEAL who came at her. She had kids waiting for her at home, so failure was not an option. It’s not like Lucas was going to brush his teeth if she didn’t remind him, and if Gabby died, Kyle would never put her phone down. She had to be as badass of a mom as she was a spy.
She glanced in the mirror and squared her shoulders. Also, she adjusted her yoga pants.
Gabby, with or without camel toe, was going to have it all, damn it. If she could take down a money laundering ring of the Russian Mafia, she could handle anything. Well, most anything. Things got a little cloudy when it came to Markus, but more like cloudy with a chance of sausage. Dear god, she’d read too many children’s books.
Gabby went dreamy for a moment—the man looked like Regé-Jean Page, the spy version. He’d gone from being her handler to her trainer. Unlike Regé-Jean, Markus showed up for work and for her. Not that Gabby had a chip on her shoulder about Regé-Jean Page quittingBridgertonor anything.
Gabby set her Stanley on the bike seat and put as much of her hair into a ponytail as would fit. While she was trying to get a few more hairs into the rubber band, the cup crashed to the ground, and the clatter echoed against the concrete walls of the training basement.
“Damn.” She grabbed a newspaper someone had left on the bike’s console and ineffectively dabbed at the spill. “Who Killed Amanda Duvall?”—a headline with a picture of a beautiful young woman caught her attention. Gabby stopped mopping and climbed onto the bike holding the damp newspaper. With her “rolling hills” program selected, she read:
Amanda Duvall, thirty-four, was found dead in her Columbia Heights townhome last Saturday. Ms. Duvallwas a political journalist who recently quit theWashington Postto focus on her Substack magazine,ThinkPiece. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Suicide has not been ruled out.
No one who knows Amanda believes she would have taken her own life. Hours before her death, she registered for a candle-making class the next day. If it was murder, the motive just might be a cover-up. This reporter can’t help but wonder: What was Amanda Duvall investigating?
The program on Gabby’s exercise bike shifted to uphill mode. She stopped reading as she struggled to make it up the pretend hill. The ink was too smeared from her drink to read the rest anyway.
As she “climbed,” Gabby’s thoughts shifted back to Markus, her sexy spy trainer. Her pedaling slowed to almost zero at the thought of introducing him to her kids. She could pedal up a twenty percent incline but not when she was dragging all her worries. With her momentum gone, she couldn’t get the pedals moving again. Kyle was usually a petulant teenage girl, but, for the first time in a long time, there had been a tenuous peace, and one she didn’t want to lose by telling her kids about Markus.
The bike’s screen flashed a notice, “Keep moving. You can do it.”
Of course she could. Prior planning, compartmentalization, communication, contingency plans. She had the skills to balance romance, bad guys, and her kids. No big deal.
Just as she gave another push, a noise near the stairwell drew her attention.
“Carl?” She called the EOD janitor’s name.
But the footsteps sounded more deliberate than Carl’s, and they were coming toward her. “Carl? Is that you?”
A form stepped into the hallway under the glow of the red exit sign, and Gabby’s senses went on high alert.
This was not Carl.
The man took another step forward, and then another, still without any greeting. Markus had told her to be on alert for a double agent in the building while he was training her a couple of weeks ago. He’d explained the danger while she was eating lunch, an Athenian pizza with extra olives and feta. She remembered the pizza being a little dry. The exact danger—she couldn’t recall.
But this looked like trouble. No one with good intentions wore a ski mask, and he was still heading in her direction. With no one else in the gym, there was no calling for help. And her gun was across the mats. There was no shooting her way out of this, unless she played it cool.
As casually as she could, she got off the bike. She tripped a little and laughed at her perceived ineptitude (one of her biggest strengths as an agent). After walking like she was wearing a storm trooper uniform for a few steps, she pulled off her shoes. “It’s impossible to walk in these things,” she said.
Halfway to her gun, the man caught her eye. She gave him a friendly wave.
He grunted a noncommittal reply.
Her heart was hammering in her ears.
Ten feet from her gun, he said, “Stop where you are, Agent Greene.”
“Really? Are we doing this? I have to get home to the kids. I was already pushing it, trying to get in a workout. I’ll just pretend likeI didn’t see you, and we can all go about our business.” She was running at the mouth.
The man reasserted himself. “Don’t take one more step.”
“Are you going to shoot me?” she asked, subtly getting into a fight stance.
