A Spy's Secret
Author
Rachel Astor
Reads
19.2K
Chapters
27
She's wholesome as apple pie… Or is she? Bakery owner Ava Katz adores everything about her adopted hometown of Ambrosia Falls — especially her best friend, mystery writer Zach Harrison. But the bucolic setting is hiding something — or someone — more sinister. The Apple Cider Festival is threatened by a series of mishaps, and Zach's young daughter goes missing — just as the spark between Ava and her neighbor begins to explode into flames. Has Ava's mysterious past plunged them into danger? Can Zach solve the tangled mystery of just who his best friend really is — and will Ava find his child before it's too late for them all?
Prologue
Something had been off with Justin for weeks.
The change was subtle—most people would never notice—but the Sparrow’s training taught her to spot inconsistencies. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was, exactly, but he was acting strange. And when he kissed her goodbye that fateful Tuesday morning, a thought hit her like a truck, filled to the brim with trepidation.
Oh God, he’s going to ask me to marry him.
Was that even something she wanted?
Judging from the way her stomach flopped when the thought crashed through her brain, it wasn’t. Except, Justin was the best guy she knew. She only trusted two people in the world, and he was one of them.
In their business—a business literally built on lies—trust was in short supply, only coming after years of earning it. And Justin had earned it. He’d been her partner for four years before they ever got romantically involved. It was inevitable the relationship would eventually turn into something more.
But they’d only been a couple for eight months.
Of course, time acted differently when you were in the spy business. Forced to depend on someone to keep you safe when they held your life in their hands made everything more intense, heightened. And as her communications tech for years, he’d kept her safe through inconceivable danger.
Lately though, things were less...exciting. Which of course had been inevitable too.
Maybe she was reading too much into things. They’d only been living together a few months, after all. And even that had been more out of convenience when the lease came up on his apartment. She owned this huge, beautiful place with plenty of space, and it seemed like the logical thing to do. But now that the thought had entered her brain, she needed to know.
Justin wouldn’t be back for hours.
So she began to search.
Thoughts jolted through her. Thoughts like too soon, bad timing and...I have to get out.
Sparrow’s training taught her how to conduct a thorough search while making sure to keep everything intact. Neat. No suspicion aroused.
She came up empty in the house. Deep down she suspected she would. If a ring existed, she knew where it would be.
The shed.
Justin had the small building delivered when he moved in.
“I could never do this stuff in my old apartment, but I’ve wanted this for years,” he’d said.
And it didn’t matter to Sparrow. Her property had plenty of space, tucked out of the way from prying eyes, far away from the city. She loved being lost in the desert. And so, the shed was installed. A dark room for his photography. No matter how advanced technology got, Justin swore something about film was truer, more real. There was an art to it.
Sparrow thought his passion was endearing.
What would she do if she found a ring? Make hints that it was too soon? But how could she possibly do that without rousing his suspicions that she’d discovered it? Justin was trained to spot lies too.
Sparrow flung the shed door open and flicked on the light. Everything appeared in order. Exacting order. One more thing that differed between the two of them. Sparrow wasn’t messy, but she wasn’t anal either. Working undercover meant blending in, and she always thought Justin’s obsessive neatness was too over-the-top to blend. But no one would ever discover his perfectionism way out here, so she let it go. Although, when she routinely found her toiletry bottles lined up with the labels all facing front and in order from shortest to tallest, she always wanted to mix them all up into a disorganized group. One time, she did exactly that. He’d come up behind her, grasping her in a tight hug, as if he was physically trying to stop her. “I love that you love a little chaos,” he’d said.
“It’s hardly chaos,” Sparrow replied, pulling gently out of his grasp.
The bottles were once again lined in military precision the next time she came into the room.
The urge now to mix up the shelves of chemicals, film and tools was immense, but she was far too professional. Start at one end and be methodical. Leave no stone—or bottle—unturned.
I have to get out.
Stop, she told herself. Things are fine. Why do you always search for trouble whenever things are going well?
Unfortunately, she knew the answer. Because she always found trouble. And when she tipped over a black plastic chemical jug in the middle of ten other black plastic chemical jugs, hearing a telltale click of a door unlatching, she realized she’d found it once again.
For a second, she actually wished she’d discovered what she’d gone looking for. She’d realized in the past few minutes, with absolute clarity, she did not want to marry this man, but still, a ring would have been so much better than this.
Sparrow shot off a quick text before she pulled the trapdoor, which had unlatched from the floor when she tilted the bottle. Annoyance rolled through her. The bastard did this on her own property right under her nose, probably during the Marseille job when he claimed he was sick. She should have caught it. She’d been trained to catch things like this. Trained not to trust anyone. But she did. She trusted Justin. Sure, he had his idiosyncrasies, but this was Justin.
I have to get out.
Sparrow grabbed for her gun, but it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. All her weapons were in the house. But she couldn’t turn back. Irritation and curiosity fueled her forward.
Until a moment ago she believed she had control. Of her life, her career, of everything. But suddenly nothing was true anymore. And with the passion of a thousand sports fans whose team had just lost, she hated that she’d been played.
The bunker was pitch-black. She lit the screen on her phone to search for a switch, but there was only a simple light bulb with a string. She pulled it, sucking in a breath, bracing herself for anything.
Still, she was not prepared for what she saw.
Surveillance.
A typical spread. Photos of the target. Maps of where they’d been. Movements tracked down to the minute. Schedules.
But it was the face of the target, staring back from all those photos, that almost broke her.
Her face.
Some of the pictures were from before she’d even met Justin. Years before. Of her shopping, eating...sleeping. Newspaper articles from when her parents were killed ten years ago. Family history. Not that there was anyone left anymore.
The pictures and articles grew older as she moved down the wall.
She reached up to pull the string on the second light above her.
Click.
No light came on. In an instant she understood her fatal mistake. A barely audible squeal pierced her ears. And then the blast.
Blinding, deafening, jolting her forward. Backward? She didn’t know.
Pain.
And as the world began to go black, Sparrow had only one thought left.
I have to get out.
