Page 71 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

As she passes Miles, his hand brushes the strap of her bag.

The movement is so quick and natural that I would never have noticed it before he taught me what a brush pass looked like.

Something small and silver disappears beneath the edge of her bag, and she keeps walking.

Miles is mumbling something, like he’s talking to someone, even though no one is standing near enough for him to be talking to them. I can’t hear any of his words. My pulse kicks harder.

The man with the tablet closes the cover over it, and the man beside the tool chest begins walking toward another exit, as though the two actions have no connection.

Miles looks toward the polished side of the jet again, checking the reflection behind him.

This is not client relations.

Unless Miles’s clients are significantly more criminal than I had assumed.

I step back behind the corner before anyone can look my way. My pulse is pounding hard enough to qualify as percussion.

Miles is wearing a disguise. He is meeting people who are asking him how he would move mysterious items across international borders with compromised couriers. He is talking to someone apparently through some kind of hidden mic. He just slipped something into a woman’s bag without her noticing.

There are probably innocent explanations for all of those things. Unfortunately, I cannot currently think of one.

I know enough from spy movies to understand that running into a hangar while shouting an undercover person’s real name is generally considered poor support-person behavior, so I return to my car.

My purse can wait. Apparently, it is the least secret thing Miles has been carrying around.

I start driving back home, and for the first five minutes, my mind is unusually quiet.

Then every suspicious Miles moment from the past five years arrives at once.

His people-watching isn’t only storytelling. He notices routes, hands, reflections, synchronized movement, and every person watching someone they pretend not to be watching.

He knows where every exit and security camera is and notices every person who enters a room.

His client-relations emergencies require a suit, even at ten at night.

He takes authority over phone calls so quickly that people start obeying before he finishes the sentence.

He disappears with vague explanations and returns with bruises, cuts, and once a shoulder injury he claimed came from slipping while moving office furniture.

The Lancaster house has a security system capable of declaring a shed hostile.

Blake is a dentist. He has a normal job with clearly identifiable responsibilities involving teeth. But every other Lancaster sibling works at Lancaster Business Solutions and describes their position with phrases that convey absolutely nothing. Client relations. Data analysis. Technical support. Project coordination. All of them travel without notice. All of them keep unusual hours. All of them behave like a family dinner could become an emergency extraction at any moment. Charlie uses words like perimeter, surveillance, extraction, and read you in, then acts as though they commonly appear in conversations about computer systems.

By the time I pull into my driveway, the facts have rearranged themselves into a picture so obvious that I feel like I’ve been staring at the individual pieces for years while refusing to acknowledge they form a man who looks like my best friend but probably has a high security clearance.

I sit in my parked car and update my list.

POSSIBLE MILES REVELATIONS

1. Moving away.

2. Dying.

3. Getting bangs.

4. Angry mob boss.

5. Found someone.