Page 153 of Jonesing for a Spy

Charlie is through the apartment door and calling for Mirren.

She pops her head out of the bedroom. “Shit. Let me get dressed,” she rushes out and dives back into the bedroom, and into the closet, making use of the fireman’s pole she’s apparently never needed.

That’s my cue.

Green lights fire up to shine through all the windows. A projection of a circling disc is cast outside of the one right where our victim stands. With a whoosh, the lights and the projection vanish.

“Scooter?” Charlie chokes out before clearing his throat and asking louder, “Scoot??”

She can’t respond because she’s right beside me, doubled over laughing.

“Mirren!” He moves through the apartment, into our former bedroom and turns three hundred and sixty degrees before looking straight up. “No. Not possible,” he mutters before returning to the living room.

“Mirren. Come out now.” This time it’s a command as he spins again to look over his shoulder.

He reenters the bedroom, at first hesitant. “If you’re in the bathroom, we’ll both be scarred for life, but I’m coming in. Speak now.”

“Or forever hold my pee,” Freckles chokes out on gulps of wheezing laughter.

Charlie comes out of the bathroom white as a ghost and approaches the closet. One fist at the ready, he throws open the closet and tosses its meager contents aside. A few coat hangers clatter together since so little is left hanging. We moved almost everything down here to start this chapter of our lives.

“What the fuck?” Charlie asks and then manages to tear apart my fiancée’s apartment, including braving looking in the two other closets in her place. He’ll find nothing. That’s the way the prank was designed.

“But I saw her. I know I did.”

“Watching him talk to himself is so worth the price of the cameras,” Mirren says from my side.

“As if the look on his face wasn’t?” I ask.

“No, that was worth paying double.”

Charlie laps the apartment another time, faster than I’d think he could move. To the bathroom, around the bedroom, inside the closet, reopening the hall storage, surveying the living room again, but that open area holds nothing. Neither does the coat closet he’s checked twice already.

He spins in circles before running down her front stairs only to go back up them again and do yet another lap, calling her name the whole time.

When he flies down the stairs, he yells my name.

We could’ve planned my “disappearance,” too, but it means I lost my starring role.

“You’re up,” Mirren says.

Stepping out into the hallway, I mask my features and ask, “What’s wrong?”

“Mirren’s— Um. I, uh…”

“Charlie, is Mirren okay?” I push past him to exit the house.

“She’s gone. Mirri’s gone. I don’t— I mean…”

“What do you mean gone?” I let my voice rise and rush into the night.

“Did you see those lights?”

I whirl on him. “What lights?”

“You didn’t see the green lights?” Confusion is plastered all over him.

“There weren’t any green lights. Where. Is. My. Fiancée?”