Page 80 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

“I’m alive.”

“That wasn’t my question.” She points at the chair under the lamp. “You may need to move into the interrogation light.”

“I’ll answer your questions.”

“All of them?”

“Everything I’m permitted to answer.”

She makes a frustrated sound. “There are still things you can’t tell me.”

“Yes.”

“How am I supposed to know when you’re keeping something classified and when you’re lying because you don’t want me to know?”

The question lands harder than the others.

“You ask, and I tell you when I can’t answer. No more invented client meetings or fake explanations. If something is classified, I’ll tell you it’s classified.”

She stops again. For several seconds, she simply looks at me. I can almost see her trying to fit what she learned today around the man she has known for five years. Her gaze moves over my face. My hands. The sweater I’ve worn dozens of times around her. She recognized me when none of those things looked the same.

She didn’t know my job. But she knew me.

“What were you doing at the hangar?” she asks.

“That falls into the permitted-to-answer category. Mostly.”

“Mostly is better than nothing.”

“The person we’re investigating only accepts certain clients through referrals. I got one. That referral got my cover identity a meeting today. The people at the hangar were deciding whether Maxwell Shaw was someone they were willing to do business with.”

“Maxwell Shaw.”

“Me with someone else’s nose.”

“Ah. Maxwell.” She says it as though she has been formally introduced. “The woman in the camel coat?”

“One of the people evaluating me.”

“And the thing you put in her bag?”

“A tracker. She planted it on me first. I found it and gave it back.”

Her entire face lights up. “Reverse brush pass.”

“That’s not technically⁠—”

“Reverse. Brush. Pass.”

I decide to roll with it. “Yes. A reverse brush pass. How did you even spot that?”

“You taught me what to look for.”

Pride rises before I can stop it.

Reese identified me through a professionally constructed disguise, recognized a brush pass, stayed outside the restricted perimeter, and withdrew instead of compromising what she guessed might be an undercover operation.

She also approached an active operation without telling anyone and stood where Rooke’s security may have seen her.