Free Mr. Nice Spy by Jordan McCollum

the whole fiasco.
    I restart the recording to let Talia capture the guy’s voice, and she gets to work sending the sample to our computers. Then I fast-forward to the Arabic half of the conversation. It’s only been half an hour, but I need to be ready for if — when — Angela calls.
    In fact, I’ll go the preemptive route. I send the audio message to her email, hoping the attachment works this time.
    Without the facial recognition, and waiting on the voiceprint, we need Angela’s translation to be sure A.) who this guy is and B.) that he’s definitely passing along confidential diplomatic information.
    “We need everything we can find on Marcus and Kelvin — addresses, profiles, the works,” Talia says. “We need to be ready for all the eventualities.”
    “We’ll figure that out when we get there, princess of paranoia.”
    She scowls at me. “Excuse me for being prepared. Why are you always thinking one move ahead? You can do better than that, or you wouldn’t have survived this long.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I mutter. “You know we’re winging this out of necessity. We need flexibility.”
    “We need to plan ahead.”
    “This is my case, isn’t it?” Like Talia hasn’t been roped into every step of the way.
    “And I’m tired of scrambling. Step up.”
    The last time I heard those words flashes through my mind. I turn away, ignoring the burning welts in my chest from her words. Her words — and Shanna’s.
    Talia won’t let the conversation end, but at least she stays focused on the case. “Are we going to convince him to turn himself in? Quit?”
    “We could threaten to go to the ambassador.”
    “Would we?”
    I offer an I-don’t-know palm. “We’re counterintel. That alone should fill any lower-level pencil pusher with fear.”
    “If we tell him.” She sighs. “Profiles, at least?”
    “Fine. I’ll take Kelvin. Sounds like my kind of guy.”
    “An absolute zero?”
    I force an obviously fake pity laugh. I don’t get her joke, but I’m clearly the butt of it — in more ways than one. I plug my phone into a charger and get to work on the best profiling methods we have without resorting to actual CIA resources.
    This could take a while.
     

    Of course, Kelvin and Marcus couldn’t possibly live in the same part of town. No, no, why would they want to make things simple? We try to split the difference between Kelvin’s boonies address and Marcus’s across the river — and end up uncomfortably close to our office. But nobody will notice a cable company van in a residential neighborhood, right?
    Who am I kidding? It’s a Saturday in Ottawa. Who’s around to notice?
    The dark creeps in until Talia and I can’t see our latest hands of five-card bluff. I check my watch. Ninety minutes until Shanna’s flight. I don’t think showing up with Talia would send quite the right message.
    “So,” I start, “who’s this guy?”
    She shrugs, like downplaying it now is going to work. “A guy.”
    “A guy that’s got you blushing after one conversation.”
    On cue, Talia blushes. “Two.”
    Nailed it. “Come on, give me something to work with.”
    “Yeah, that’s a big no.” Normally, she’d say something like that with an undercurrent of humor, and I’d be able to tease and cajole some little factoid out of her. But this time that’s a shutdown. The conversation dies, and a palpable quiet falls over us, thick and heavy and tense.
    I watch the clock, the street, the sky, anything but Talia.
    “Why?” Her question finally slices through the silence.
    “Why what?” I ask, though I know exactly what she means.
    “Why’d you do it? The truth.”
    I look into those hazel eyes, though all I can see in the dark is the reflection from the streetlamp. I’ve had a thing for Talia pretty much always, but clearly that feeling isn’t mutual.
    Spies have to be good at figuring out what someone wants and using that to get what we want. This time I know exactly what