Page 35 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

“I always do,” Vera said.

Oakes left. The bell jingled behind him.

Vera finished her scone and considered her next move.

The walk back to The Rookery was pleasant—warm sun, light breeze, the scent of cut grass from the village green. Several people nodded to her as she passed, their greetings warmer than usual. Word had spread, as word always did in small villages, that the elderly woman with the knitting bag had somehow been involved in stopping the “unpleasantness.” No one knew the details. No one needed to.

She was, and would remain, just a dotty old pensioner who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Her cover was intact.

Watson was waiting in the front window when she arrived, his expression suggesting that her forty-five-minute absence was a betrayal on par with the great cat famines of history.

“I brought you something,” Vera said, producing a small paper bag from her cardigan pocket. “Mrs. Gable’s salmon pâté biscuits. The ones you like.”

Watson’s expression shifted from outrage to cautious interest.

“Don’t get used to it. This is a special occasion.”

She unlocked the door and went inside, Watson weaving between her ankles with the aggressive affection of a cat who had decided to forgive her. She set down her bag, hung up her cardigan, and went to the kitchen to plate the biscuits.

Watson followed, supervising.

“We did good work,” Vera told him, setting the plate on the floor. “Mrs. Gable is free. Julian is in custody. OmniCorp is under investigation. The village is safe.”

Watson ignored her entirely, his face buried in the biscuits.

“You’re welcome,” Vera said drily.

She made herself a cup of tea—her third of the day, but who was counting—and carried it to the sitting room. The afternoon light was soft through the curtains, casting long shadows across the carpet.

She sat in her armchair and picked up her knitting. The scarf she had been working on for months was gone—sacrificed to the cause of restraining a corporate assassin—but she had started a new one. Blue this time. A change of pace.

The needles clicked softly as she worked.

Click. Click. Click.

It was peaceful. Domestic. The kind of afternoon she had imagined when she first retired to Lark’s End—quiet days filled with tea and knitting and absolutely no international conspiracies.

Of course, it hadn’t quite worked out that way.

Her mind drifted to the USB drive currently hidden in the false bottom of her Welsh dresser. The one labeled “Viper Protocol - Master.” She had given DCI Morrison the briefcase and most of its contents, but the drive she had kept.

Insurance, she told herself. In case OmniCorp’s lawyers found a way to make the charges disappear.

But that wasn’t the only reason.

The drive contained files she hadn’t yet examined. Communications. Contacts. The names of everyone involved in the Viper Protocol, from the field operatives to the board members who had authorized murder as a business strategy.

And somewhere in those files, she suspected, was the identity of the voice on Julian’s phone. The one who had given the orders. The one Julian had called “sir.”

Julian was a tool. A weapon pointed at a target. But someone had aimed him.

Someone was still out there.

Vera’s needles paused.

She thought about Martha Gable, back in her bakery, smiling for the first time in days. She thought about the Vicar, who had visited Mrs. Gable in custody every single day and was now, according to village gossip, openly courting her despite the scandal it would cause. She thought about the other villagers—the Hendersons, the Pringles—going about their lives, oblivious to how close they had come to losing everything.