Page 69 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

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.”