Page 16 of Beehive

“What happened?” Will appeared before I could blink.

“Why do you—”

Fingers of iron gripped my arms and spun me around. Will’s eyes blazed with annoyance and concern. “Don’t fuck with me, Thomas. I see it on your face. What happened?”

I let my head fall back to rest against the wood. “Nothing happened, babe. There was a man at the park . . . It was nothing. He was just a guy lighting a cigarette.”

His eyes narrowed before relaxing. “Was there anything?”

I pulled the scrolled paper from my pocket and held it up.

“What’s it say?”

I shrugged and held it toward him. “We’ve been together long enough for me to know better than to read our mail without you.”

He snorted, finally smiling and letting the light return to his eyes, the twinkle that made every cell in my body brighten and burn. Then he snatched the scroll and spun away.

“Read it aloud.”

Without looking back, he raised one indignant finger, then began to read.

TVC

The peak

Red scarf

“Huh,” I huffed. “A meeting in the open at noon?”

Will nodded. “At the Vendôme Column. Are you wearing red or me?”

I laughed and punched his arm. “Idiot. The red scarf is what we’re looking for, not what we’re wearing.”

“This is Paris. Onemustmatch.” He smirked and tossed the scroll at my chest.

1. Office of Strategic Services, the American intelligence service during World War II.

2. Surveillance Detection Routes, intelligence tradecraft used to ensure no one was following.

7

Will

Ilay beside Thomas, watching dust drift across slivers of light that slipped through a crack in our curtains. Sleep had evaded me all night. I couldn’t shake the message from the dead drop—or the man with the cigarette Thomas swore was nothing. Meeting with our American handler after such a long silence from Washington was a bit jarring but not wholly unexpected.

The urgency with which we were summoned tied my stomach in knots.

The request to meet in a busy square, exposed to anyone who might watch from the shadows, was also unusual, a change from the quiet anonymity we were used to.

In a city like Paris, where every whisper could be dangerous, the whole thing left me with a deep unease.

Thomas stirred.

He’d slept throughout the night, barely turning from his back where he lay like a vampire in a coffin. I know because, wide awake, I watched for hours as his eyes darted with every dream.His twitching reminded me of a dog whose paws never settled as she chased squirrels or balls in her sleeping visions.

His hand brushed mine as he moved, then lingered, his fingers trailing over my knuckles. It was a quiet touch, but his steady warmth grounded me, as it always did. His eyes fluttered open, deep pools of brown narrowing, reading the tension I carried with me through the night.

He reached up and brushed my cheek, sending a shiver down my neck.