Page 94 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

Miles: You aren’t authorized to see my passports.

Reese: I can fabricate those, too.

Miles: Retired cover identities only.

There’s a pause.

Reese: Wait. Are you saying yes to option C?

Miles: I’m saying tacos are involved.

Reese: This is the best day of my life.

Miles: You learned I was a spy two days ago.

Reese: And now it has finally started benefiting me.

I should hesitate. I should consider whether spending the evening describing old cover identities violates the intention behind the boundaries my mother established. But there are years of retired covers that can’t be connected to current operations. Identities that no longer exist. Histories designed for completed missions in countries Reese will never hear about.

I can give her something that is no longer relevant in any way. Photographs, if I use sanitized ones, rather than ones on actual documents. Maybe a name or two. Jobs. Enough to let her make up stories. Enough to let one piece of my work life become part of our normal one.

Miles: I’ll pick you up at six.

Reese: I can drive.

Miles: I’ll pick you up at six.

Reese: This is discrimination based on an exaggerated interpretation of my traffic history.

Miles: You hit a mailbox last month.

Reese: The mailbox was unnecessarily close to the road.

Miles: Six.

Reese: Fine. But I’m choosing the tacos.

By five thirty, I leave the CSA carrying a slim folder containing three retired cover photographs that the director approved from a sanitized archive. No passports. No operational details. Just the faces. I stop at Reese’s at six.

She opens the passenger door before I can get out. “You’re late.”

I glance at the dashboard clock. “It’s five fifty-nine.”

“But I’ve been ready since five forty-two.”

“That sounds like poor time management.”

She gets into her seat. “Nope. It’s straight-up enthusiasm.”

For one second, neither of us says anything. The last time she sat in this seat, she’d just toured the CSA. Before that, she had interrogated me in a mustache. Now she is wearing a yellow sweater beneath denim overalls, a bee-shaped clip in her hair, and the expression she always gets before doing something she considers fun and that I might be a bit wary about.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

Her smile appears, and something in my chest loosens. Her smile continues to grow as she points toward the folder on the center console. “Are those the passports?”

“They’re photographs from retired cover identities.”