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She laughed. “Both. We graduated together.”
He would have slammed on the brakes in surprise if he hadn’t taken all the wild driving courses required of special operators. “No fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way.”
“So, you were like, a prodigy, and graduated five years early?” There was no way this woman was in her late thirties.
“No, Lieutenant Commander. Not a prodigy. Or at least, no smarter than Freya. We’re the same age.”
Damn. He’d sure had her pegged wrong. She was close to his age. Maybe older. “I was sure you were about twenty-five.”
She laughed. “With a PhD? And more than a decade working in my field?”
Okay. So he hadn’t thought that through. “My bad.”
“I’m told it will catch up with me someday. At least most people assume I’m late twenties or early thirties. I don’t even get carded anymore.”
He glanced sideways long enough to see her face wasn’t red. She was relaxing around him. At least there was a positive result to him speaking like a fool.
“Now, answer my question,” she said. “How do you know Freya exactly?”
“We worked together in Djibouti a few years ago.”
“I thought you were Navy, not CIA? But I don’t really know how the CIA stuff works.”
He smiled again. “That’s kind of the point with tradecraft. But no. I’m a Navy SEAL.”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
He laughed at the full reversal of their surprised roles. “Totally fucking true.”
“So Freya needs a guy to act like an antiquities buyer, and she just casually calls a SEAL. That is so Freya.” She said it like a seventh grader, making him smile.
“Well, I was in town. And her husband is a former Green Beret, so she knows a lot of us special forces types.”
“I haven’t met Cal. I presume he’s a good guy?”
“One of the best. Well, for a Green Beret.”
She snickered at that, and he felt a little buzz. Weird.
“Are they going to ask to see my ID at the auction house?”
“Yes. They might even make a copy of it. Is that a problem?”
“No, I’ll just use my driver’s license. Nothing about military or SEALs while we’re there, okay?”
“So what do you do?”
“Accountant?”
She snickered again. “No way could you pass for an accountant.”
“Hey, that sounds like anti-accountantism or something.”
“Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know, but you’re stereotyping.”
